

f 

■ 

III 

II 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



QDDD3HTEaab 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 



BY 

HENRY VAN DYKE 

Professor of English at Princeton University 

Hyde Lecturer, University of Paris, 1908-9 

Hon. LL.D., University of Geneva 

Hon. F.R.S.L., London 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1910 

AIJ rights reserved 






n 



i 




a'-- 



Copyright, igio, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910. 



Norfaoott ^ress 

J. S. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



CCI.A*^:>eiV^ 



^;r 



TO MADAME 

ELISABETH SAINTE-MARIE PERRIN, N&E BAZIN 

To inscribe your name upon this volume, dear Madame, is to 
recall delightful memories of my year in France. Your sympathy 
encouraged me in the adventurous choice of a subject so large and 
simple for a course of lectures at the Sorbonne. While they were 
in the making, you acted as an audience of one, in the long music- 
room at Hostel and in the forest of St. Gervais, and gave gentle 
counsels of wisdom in regard to the points likely to interest and 
retain a larger audience of Parisians in the Amphitheatre Richelieu. 
Then, the university adventure being ended without mishap, your 
skill as a translator admirably clothed the lectures in your own 
lucid language, and sent them out to help a little in strengthening 
the ties of friendship between France and America. Grateful for 
all the charming hospitality of your country, which made my year 
happy and, I hope, not unfruitful, I dedicate to you this book on 
the Spirit of America, because you have done so much to make me 
understand, appreciate, and admire the true Spirit of France. 

HENRY VAN DYKE. 



PREFACE 

This book contains the first seven of a series of 
twenty-six conferences, given in the winter of 1908- 
1909, on the Hyde Foundation, at the University 
of Paris, and repeated in part at other universities 
of France, They were dehvered in EngHsh, and 
afterward translated into French and published 
under the title of Le Genie de V Ameriqiie. In 
making this American edition it has not seemed 
worth while to attempt to disguise the fact that 
these chapters were prepared as lectures to be 
given to a French audience, and that their purpose, 
in accordance with the generous design of the 
founder of the chair, was to promote an inteUigent 
sympathy between France and the United States. 
If the book finds readers among my countrymen, 
I beg them, as they read, to remember its origin. 
Perhaps it may have an interest of its own, as a 
report, made in Paris, of the things that seem vital, 
significant, and creative in the life and character 
of the American people. 



vii 



CONTENTS 



Introduction .... 
The Soul of a People . 
Self-reliance and the Republic 
Fair Play and Democracy 
Will-power, Work, and Wealth 
Common Order and Social Cooperation 
Personal Development and Education 
Self-expression and Literature . 



XI 

3 

31 
71 
"3 
151 
195 
239 



INTRODUCTION 

There is an ancient amity between France and 
America, which is recorded in golden letters in the 
chronicles of human liberty. In one of the crowded 
squares of New York there stands a statue of a young 
nobleman, slender, elegant, and brave, springing for- 
ward to offer his sword to the cause of freedom. The 
name under that figure is La Fayette. In one of the 
broad avenues of Paris there stands a statue of a 
plain gentleman, grave, powerful, earnest, sitting his 
horse like a victor and lifting high his sword to salute 
the star of France. The name under that figure is 
Washington. 

It is well that in both lands such a friendship be- 
tween two great peoples should be 

"Immortalized by art's immortal praise." 

It is better still that it should be warmed and strength- 
ened by present efforts for the common good : that 
the world should see the two great republics standing 
together for justice and fair play at Algeciras, work- 
ing together for the world's peace at the Congress of 
the Hague. 



INTRODUCTION 

But in order that a friendship like this should 
really continue and increase, there must be something 
more than a sentimental sympathy. There must be 
a mutual comprehension, a real understanding, be- 
tween the two peoples. Romantic love, the little 
Amor with the bow and arrows, inay be as blind as 
the painters and novelists represent him. But true 
friendship, the strong god Amicitia, is open-eyed and 
clear-sighted. So long as Frenchmen insist upon 
looking at America merely as the country of the Sky- 
scraper and the Almighty Dollar, so long as Ameri- 
cans insist upon regarding France merely as the home 
of the Yellow Novel and the Everlasting Dance, so 
long will it be difficult for the ancient amity between 
these two countries to expand and deepen into a 
true and vital concord. 

France and America must know each other better. 
They must learn to look each into the other's mind, 
to read each the other's heart. They must recognize 
each other less by their foibles and more by their 
faiths, less by the factors of national weakness and 
more by the elements of national strength. Then, 
indeed, I hope and believe they will be good and 
faithful friends. 

It is to promote this serious and noble purpose 
that an American gentleman, Mr. James Hazen 
Hyde, has founded two chairs, one at the University 
of Paris, and one at Harvard University, for an an- 



INTRODUCTION 

nual interchange of professors, (and possibly of 
ideas,) between France and America. Through 
this generous arrangement we have had the benefit 
of hearing, in the United States, MM. Doumic, Rod, 
de R^gnier, Gaston Deschamps, Hugues Le Roux, 
Mabilleau, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Millet, Le Braz, 
Tardieu, and the Vicomte d'Avenel. On the same 
basis Messrs. Barrett Wendell, Santayana, Coolidge, 
and Baker have spoken at the Sorbonne and at the 
other French Universities. This year Harvard has 
called me from the chair of English Literature at 
Princeton University, and the authorities of the 
Sorbonne have graciously accorded me the hospi- 
tality of this Amphithedtre Richelieu, to take my 
small part in this international mission. 

Do you ask for my credentials as an ambassador? 
Let me omit such formalities as academic degrees, 
professorships, and doctorates, and present my claims 
in more simple and humble form. A family residence 
of two hundred and fifty years in America, whither my 
ancestors came from Holland in 1652 ; a working life 
of thirty years which has taken me among all sorts 
and conditions of men, in almost all the states of the 
Union from Maine to Florida and from New York to 
California; a personal acquaintance with all the 
Presidents except one since Lincoln; a friendship 
with many woodsmen, hunters, and fishermen in 
the forests where I spend the summers ; an entire 



INTRODUCTION 

independence of any kind of political, ecclesiastical, 
or academic partisanship ; and some familiarity with 
American literature, its origins, and its historical re- 
lations, — these are all the claims that I can make to 
your attention. They are small enough, to be sure, 
but such as they are you may find in them a partial 
explanation of the course which these lectures are to 
take. 

You will understand that if I have chosen a subject 
which is not strictly academic, it is because the best 
part of my life has been spent out of doors among 
men. You will perceive that my failure to speak of 
Boston as the centre of the United States may have 
some connection with the accident that I am not a 
Bostonian. You will account for the absence of a 
suggestion that any one political party is the only 
hope of the Republic by the fact that I am not a poli- 
tician. You will detect in my attitude towards litera- 
ture the naive conviction that it is not merely an art 
existing for art's sake, but an expression of the inner 
life and a factor in the moral character. Finally, you 
will conclude, with your French logicality of mind, 
that I must be an obstinate idealist, because I am 
going to venture to lecture to you on The Spirit of 
America. That is as much as to say that I believe 
man is led by an inner light, and that the ideals, 
moral convictions, and vital principles of a people 
are the most important factors in their history.- 



INTRODUCTION 

All these things are true. They cannot be denied 
or concealed. I would willingly confess them and a 
hundred more, if I might contribute but a little 
towards the purpose of these lectures : to help some 
of the people of France to understand more truly 
the real people of America, — a people of idealists 
engaged in a great practical task. 



I 

THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

There is a proverb which affirms that in order 
to know a man you have only to travel with him for 
a week. Almost all of us have had experiences, 
sometimes happy and sometimes the reverse, which 
seem to confirm this saying. 

A journey in common is a sort of involuntary 
confessional. There is a certain excitement, a 
confusion and quickening of perceptions and sen- 
sations, in the adventures, the sudden changes, 
the new and striking scenes of travel. The bonds 
of habit are loosened. Impulses of pleasure and 
of displeasure, suddenly felt, make themselves sur- 
prisingly visible. Wishes and appetites and preju- 
dices which are usually dressed in a costume of 
words so conventional as to amount to a disguise 
now appear unmasked, and often in very scanty 
costume, as if they had been suddenly called from 
their beds by an alarm of fire on a steamboat, or, to 
use a more agreeable figure, by the armouncement 
in a hotel on the Righi of approaching sunrise. 

3 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

There is another thing which pla^-s, perhaps, a 
part in this power of travel to make swift disclosures. 
I mean the vague sense of release from duties and re- 
straints which comes to one who is away from home. 
Much of the outu'ard form of our daily conduct is 
regulated by the structure and operation of the 
social machiner}' in which we quite inevitably find 
our place. But when all this is left behind, when 
a man no longer feels the pressure of the neighbour- 
ing wheels, the constraint of the dri\Tng-belt which 
makes them all move together, nor the restraint of 
the common task to which the collective force of all 
is applied, he is "outside of the machine.'' 

The ordinary- sight-seeing, uncommercial traveller 
— the tourist, the globe-trotter — is not usually a 
person who thinks much of his own responsibilities, 
however conscious he may be of his own impor- 
tance. His favourite proverb is, "■^Mlen you are in 
Rome, do as the Romans do.'' But in the appli- 
cation of the proverb, he does not always inquire 
whether the particular thing which he is in\ited to 
do is done by the particular kind of Roman that 
he would like to be, if he lived in Rome, or by some 
other kind of Roman quite different, even contrar}-. 
He is liberated. He is unaccountable. He is a 
butterfly \-isiting a strange garden. He has only to 
enjoy himself according to his caprice and to accept 
the in\'itations of the flowers which please him most 

4 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

This feeling of irresponsibility in travel corre- 
sponds somewhat to the effect of wine. The tongue 
is loosened. Unexpected qualities and inclinations 
are unconsciously confessed. A new man, hitherto 
unknown, appears upon the scene. And this new 
man often seems more natural, more spontaneous, 
more vivid, than our old acquaintance. "At last," 
we say to ourselves, " we know the true inwardness, 
the real reality of this fellow. He is not acting a 
part now. He is coming to the surface. We see 
what a bad fellow, or what a good fellow, he is. In 
vino et in viator e Veritas !^^ 

But is it quite correct, after all, this first impres- 
sion that travel is the great revealer of character? 
Is it the essential truth, the fundamental truth, la 
vraie verite, that we discover through this glass? 
Or is it, rather, a novel aspect of facts which are real 
enough, indeed, but not fundamental, — an aspect 
so novel that it presents itself as more important 
than it really is? To put the question in brief, 
and in a practical form, is a railway train the place 
to study character, or is it only a place to observe 
characteristics ? 

There is, of course, a great deal of complicated 
and quarrelsome psychology involved in this seem- 
ing simple question, — for example, the point at 
issue between the determinists and libertarians, the 
philosophers of the unconscious and the philoso- 

5 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

phers of the ideal, — all of which I will prudently 
pass by, in order to make a very practical and 
common-sense observation. 

Ordinary travel usually obscures and confuses 
quite as much as it reveals in the character of the 
traveller. His excitement, his moral detachment, 
his intellectual dislocation, unless he is a person of 
extraordinary firmness and poise, are apt to make 
him lose himself much more than they help him 
to find himself. In these strange and transient 
experiences his action lacks meaning and relation. 
He is carried away. He is uprooted. He is swept 
along by the current of external novelty. This 
may be good for him or bad for him. I do not ask 
this question. I am not moralizing. I am observ- 
ing. The point is that under these conditions I do 
not see the real man more clearly, but less clearly. 
To paraphrase a Greek saying, I wish not to study 
Philip when he is a little exhilarated, but Philip 
when he is sober: not when he is at a Persian 
banquet, but when he is with his Macedonians. 

Moreover, if I mistake not, the native environ- 
ment, the chosen or accepted task, the definite place 
in the great world-work, is part of the man himself. 
There are no human atoms. Relation is insepa- 
rable from quality. Absolute isolation would be in- 
visibility. Displacement is deformity. You remem- 
ber what Emerson says in his poem. Each and All : — 

6 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

"The delicate shells lay on the shore: 
The bubbles of the latest wave 
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, 
And the bellowing of the savage sea 
Greeted their safe escape to me. 
I wiped away the weeds and foam, 
I fetched my sea-bom treasures home. 
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things 
Had left their beauty on the shore 
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar." 

So I would see my man where he belongs, in the 
midst of the things which have produced him and 
which he has helped to produce. I would under- 
stand something of his relation to them. I would 
watch him at his work, the daily labour which not 
only earns his living but also moulds and forms his 
life. I would see how he takes hold of it, with 
reluctance or with alacrity, and how he regards it, 
with honour or with contempt. I would consider 
the way in which he uses its tangible results; to 
what purpose he applies them; for what objects he 
spends the fruit of his toil; what kind of bread 
he buys with the sweat of his brow or his brain. 
I would trace in his environment the influence of 
those who have gone before him. I would read 
the secrets of his heart in the uncompleted projects 
which he forms for those who are to come after 
him. In short, I would see the roots from which 
he springs, and the hopes in which his heart flowers. 

7 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

Thus, and thus only, the real man, the entire man, 
would become more clear to me. He might appear 
more or less admirable. I might like him more, or 
less. That would make no difference. The one 
thing that is sure is that I should know him better. 
I should know the soul of the man. 

If this is true, then, of the individual, how much 
more is it true of a nation, a people? The inward 
life, the real life, the animating and formative life 
of a people is infinitely difficult to discern and 
understand. 

There are a hundred concourses of travel in 
modern Europe where you may watch " the passing 
show" of all nations with vast amusement, — on 
the Champs-Elysees in May or June, in the park 
of Aix-les-Bains in midsummer, at the Italian 
Lakes in autumn, in the colonnade of Shepherd's 
Hotel at Cairo in January or February, on the 
Pincian Hill at Rome in March or April. Take 
your seats, ladies and gentlemen, at this continuous 
performance, this international vaudeville, and ob- 
serve British habits, French manners, German cus- 
toms, American eccentricities, whatever interests 
you in the varied entertainment. But do not 
imagine that in this way you will learn to know 
the national personality of England, or France, or 
Germany, or America. That is something which 
is never exported. 

8 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

Some drop of tincture or extract of it, indeed, 
may pass from one land to another in a distinct 
and concentrated individuality, as when a La- 
fayette comes to America, or a Franklin to France, 
Some partial portrait and imperfect image of it, 
indeed, may be produced in literature. And there 
the reader who is wise enough to separate the head- 
dress from the head, and to discern the figure be- 
neath the costume, may trace at least some features 
of the real life represented and expressed in poem 
or romance, in essay or discourse. But even this 
literature, in order to be vitally understood, must be 
interpreted in relation to the life of the men who 
have produced it and the men for whom it was 
produced. 

Authors are not algebraic quantities, — X, Y, Z, 
&c. They express spiritual actions and reac- 
tions in the midst of a given environment. What 
they write is in one sense a work of art, and there- 
fore to be judged accurately by the laws of that art. 
But when this judgment is made, when the book 
has been assigned its rank according to its sub- 
stance, its structure, its style, there still remains an- 
other point of view fiom which it is to be considered. 
The book is a document of life. It is the embodi- 
ment of a spiritual protest, perhaps; or it is the 
unconscious confession of an intellectual ambition; 
or it is an appeal to some popular sentiment; or it 

9 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

is the expression of the craving for some particular 
form of beauty or joy; or it is a tribute to some 
personal or social excellence; or it is the record of 
some vision of perfection seen in 

"The light that never was, on sea or land, 
The consecration, and the poet's dream." 

In every case, it is something that comes out of 
a heritage of ideals and adds to them. 

The possessor of this heritage is the soul of a 
people. This soul of a people lives at home. 

It is for this reason that America has been im- 
perfectly imderstood, and in some respects positively 
misunderstood in Europe. The American tourists, 
who have been numerous (and noticeable) on all 
the European highways of pleasure and byways of 
curiosity during the last forty years, have made a 
vivid impression on the people of the countries which 
they have visited. They are recognized. They are 
remembered. It is not necessary to inquire whether 
this recognition contains more of admiration or of 
astonishment, whether the forms which it often takes 
are flattering or the reverse. On this point I am 
sufficiently American myself to be largely indiffer- 
ent. But the point on which I feel strongly is that 
the popular impression of America which is derived 
only or chiefly from the observation of American 
travellers is, and must be, deficient, superficial, and 
in many ways misleading. 

lO 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

If this crowd of American travellers were a hun- 
dred times as numerous, it would still fail to be 
representative, it would still be unable to reveal the 
Spirit of America, just because it is composed of 
travellers. 

I grant you that it includes many, perhaps almost 
all, of the different types and varieties of Americans, 
good, bad, and mediocre. You will find in this 
crowd some very simple people and some very com- 
plicated people ; country folk and city folk; strenu- 
ous souls who come to seek culture and relaxed 
souls who come to spend money; millionnaires and 
school-teachers, saloon-keepers and university pro- 
fessors; men of the East and men of the West ; 
Yankees, Knickerbockers, Hoosiers, Cavaliers, and 
Cowboys. Surely, you say, from such a large col- 
lection of samples one ought to be able to form an 
adequate judgment of the stuff. 

But no ; on the contrary, the larger the collection 
of samples, seen under the detaching and exagger- 
ating conditions of travel, the more confused and 
the less sane and penetrating your impression will 
be, unless by some other means you have obtained 
an idea of the vital origin, the true relation, the 
common inheritance, and the national unity of these 
strange and diverse travellers who come from beyond 
the sea. 

Understand, I do not mean to say that European 
ij 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

scholars and critics have not studied American 
affairs and institutions to advantage and thrown a 
clear light of intelligence, of sympathy, of criticism, 
upon the history and life of the United States. A 
philosophical study like that of Tocqueville, a po- 
litical study like that of Mr. James Bryce, a series 
of acute social observations like those of M. Paul 
Bourget, M. Andrg Tardieu, M. Paul Boutmy, 
M. Weiller, an industrial study like that of M. 
d'Avenel, or a religious study like that of the Abbd 
Klein, — these are of great value. But they are 
quite apart, quite different, from the popular im- 
pression of America in Europe, an impression which 
is, and perhaps to some extent must naturally be, 
based upon the observations of Americans en voyage, 
and which by some strange hypnotism sometimes 
imposes itself for a while upon the American travel- 
lers themselves. 

I call this the international postal-card view of 
Aijierica. It is often amusing, occasionally irritat- 
ing, and almost always confusing. It has flashes of 
truth in it. It renders certain details with the ac- 
curacy of a kodak. But, like a picture made by 
the kodak, it has a deficient perspective and no 
atmosphere. The details do not fit together. They 
are irrelevant. They are often contradictory. 

For example, you will hear statements made about 
America like the following : — 

12 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

'The Americans worship the Almighty Dollar more than 
the English revere the Ponderous Pound or the French adore 
les beaux ecus sonnants. Per contra, the Americans are foolish 
spendthrifts who have no sense of the real value of money.' 

'America is a country without a social order. It is a 
house of one story, without partitions, in which all the in- 
habitants are on a level. Per contra, America is the place 
where class distinctions are most sharply drawn, and where 
the rich are most widely and irreconcilably separated from the 
poor.' 

'The United States is a definite experiment in political 
theory, which was begun in 1776, and which has succeeded 
because of its philosophical truth and logical consistency. 
Per contra, the United States is an accident, a nation born 
of circumstances and held together by good fortune, without 
real unity or firm foundation.' 

'The American race is a new creation, aboriginal, autoch- 
thonous, which ought to express itself in totally new and 
hitherto unheard-of forms of art and literature. Per contra, 
there is no American race, only a vast and absurd melange of 
incongruous elements, cast off from Europe by various politi- 
cal convulsions, and combined by the pressure of events, not 
into a people, but into a mere population, which can never 
have a literature or an art of its own.' 

'America is a lawless land, where every one does what he 
likes and pays no attention to the opinion of his neighbour. 
Per contra, America is a land of prejudice, of interference, of 
restriction, where personal liberty is constantly invaded by the 
tyranny of narrow ideas and traditions, embodied in ridicu- 
lous laws which tell a man how many hours a day he may 

13 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

work, what he may drink, how he may amuse himself on 
Sunday, and how fast he may drive his automobile.' 

'Finally, America is the home of materialism, a land of 
crude, practical worldliness, unimaginative, irreverent, without 
religion. But per contra, America is the last refuge of super- 
stition, of religious enthusiasm, of unenlightened devotion, 
even of antique bigotry, a land of spiritual dreamers and 
fanatics, who, as Brillat-Savarin said, have " forty religions 
and only one sauce.'" 

Have I sharpened these contrasts and contradic- 
tions a little? Have I overaccented the inconsisten- 
cies in this picture postal-card view of America? 

Perhaps so. Yet it is impossible to deny that the 
main features of this incoherent view are familiar. 
We see the reflection of them in the singular choice 
and presentation of the rare items of American 
news which find their way into the colunms of Euro- 
pean newspapers. We recognize them in the talk 
of the street and of the table-d' hoie. 

I remember very well the gravity and earnestness 
with which a learned German asked me, some years 
ago, whether, if he went to America, it would be a 
serious disadvantage to him in the first social circles 
to eat with his knife at the dinner-table. He was 
much relieved by my assurance that no one would 
take notice of it. 

I recall also the charming naivetd with which an 
English lady inquired, "Have you any good writers 

14 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

in the States?" The answer was: "None to speak 
of. We import most of our literature from Aus- 
tralia, by way of the Cape of Good Hope." 

Sometimes we are asked whether we do not find 
it a great disadvantage to have no language of our 
own ; or whether the justices of the Supreme Court 
are usually persons of good education; or whether 
we often meet Bufifalo Bill in New York society; 
or whether Shakespeare or Bernard Shaw is most 
read in the States. To such inquiries we try to 
return polite answers, although our despair of con- 
veying the truth sometimes leads us to clothe it in a 
humorous disguise. 

But these are minor matters. It is when we are 
seriously interrogated about the prospect of a 
hereditary nobility in America, created from the 
descendants of railway princes, oil magnates, and 
iron dukes; or when we are questioned as to the 
probability that the next President, or the one after 
the next, may assume an imperial state and crown, 
or perhaps that he may abolish the Constitution and 
establish communism ; or when we are asked whether 
the Germans, or the Irish, or the Scandinavians, or 
the Jews are going to dominate the United States 
in the twentieth century; or when we are told that 
the industrial and commercial forces which created 
the republic are no longer cooperant but divisive, 
and that the nation must inevitably split into several 

15 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

fragments, more or less hostile, but certainly rival; 
it is when such questions are gravely asked, that we 
begin to feel that there are some grave misconcep- 
tions, or at least that there is something important 
lacking, in the current notion of how America came 
into being and what America really is. 

I believe that the thing which is lacking is the 
perception of the Spirit of America as the creative 
force, the controlling power, the characteristic ele- 
ment of the United States. 

The republic is not an accident, happy or other- 
wise. It is not a fortuitous concourse of emigrants. 
It is not the logical demonstration of an abstract 
theory of government. It is the development of a 
life, — an inward life of ideals, sentiments, ruling 
passions, embodying itself in an outward life of 
forms, customs, institutions, relations, — a process 
as vital, as spontaneous, as inevitable, as the growth 
of a child into a man. The soul of a people has 
made the American nation. 

It is of this Spirit of America, in the past and in 
the present, and of some of its expressions, that I 
would speak in these conferences. I speak of it in 
the past because I believe that we must know some- 
thing of its origins, its early manifestations, its ex- 
periences, and its conflicts in order to understand 
what it truly signifies. 

The spirit of a people, like the spirit of a man, 
i6 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

is influenced by heredity. But this heredity is not 
merely physical, it is spiritual. There is a trans- 
mission of qualities through the soul as well as 
through the flesh. There is an intellectual pater- 
nity. There is a kinship of the mind as well as of 
the body. The soul of the people in America to-day 
is the lineal descendant of the soul of the people 
which made America in the beginning. 

Just at what moment of time this soul came into 
being, I do not know. Some theologians teach that 
there is a certain point at which the hidden physical 
life of an infant receives a donum of spiritual life 
which makes it a person, a human being. I do not 
imagine that we can fix any such point in the con- 
ception and gestation of a people. Certainly it 
would be difficult to select any date of which we 
could say with assurance, "On that day, in that 
year, the exiles of England, of Scotland, of Holland, 
of France, of Germany, on the shores of the new 
world, became one folk, into which the Spirit of 
America entered." But just as certainly it is clear 
that the mysterious event came to pass. And be- 
yond a doubt the time of its occurrence was long 
before the traditional birthday of the republic, the 
4th of July, 1776. 

The Declaration of Independence did not create 
— it did not even pretend to create — a new state 
of things. It simply recognized a state of things 
c 17 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

already existing. It declared "that these United 
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and in- 
dependent States." 

The men who framed this declaration were not 
ignorant, nor careless in the use of words. When 
practically the same men were called, a few years 
later, to frame a constitution for the United States, 
they employed quite different language: "We, the 
people of the United States, ... do ordain and 
establish this Constitution." That is the language 
of creation. It assumes to bring into being some- 
thing which did not previously exist. But the lan- 
guage of the Declaration of Independence is the 
language of recognition. It sets forth clearly a fact 
which has already come to pass, but which has 
hitherto been ignored, neglected or denied. 

What was that fact? Nothing else than the 
existence of a new people, separate, distinct, inde- 
pendent, in the thirteen American colonies. At 
what moment in the troubled seventeenth century, 
age of European revolt and conflict, the spirit of 
liberty brooding upon the immense wilderness of 
the New World, engendered this new life, we can- 
not tell. At what moment in the philosophical 
eighteenth century, age of reason and reflection, this 
new life began to be self-conscious and to feel its 
way toward an organic unity of powers and efforts, 
we cannot precisely determine. But the thing that 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

is clear and significant is that independence existed 
before it was declared. The soul of the American 
people was already living and conscious before the 
history of the United States began, 

I call this fact significant, immensely significant, 
because it marks not merely a verbal distinction 
but an essential difference, a difference which is 
vital to the true comprehension of the American 
spirit in the past and in the present. 

A nation brought to birth by an act of violence, 
if such a thing be possible, — or let us rather say, 
a nation achieving liberty by a sharp and sudden 
break with its own past and a complete overturn- 
ing of its own traditions, will naturally carry with it 
the marks of such an origin. It will be inclined to 
extreme measures and methods. It will be par- 
ticularly liable to counter-revolutions. It will often 
vibrate between radicalism and reactionism. 

But a nation "conceived in liberty," to use Lin- 
coln's glorious phrase, and pursuing its natural aims, 
not by the method of swift and forcible change, but 
by the method of normal and steady development, 
will be likely to have another temperament and a 
different history. It will at least endeavour to 
practice moderation, prudence, patience. It will 
try new experiments slowly. It will advance, not 
indeed without interruption, but with a large and 
tranquil confidence that its security and progress 

19 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

are in accordance with the course of nature and the 
eternal laws of right reason. 

Now this is true in the main of the United States. 
And the reason for this large and tranquil confidence, 
at which Europeans sometimes smile because it 
looks like bravado, and for this essentially con- 
servative temper, at which Europeans sometimes 
wonder because it seems unsuitable to a democracy, 
— the reason, I think, is to be found in the history 
of the soul of the people. 

The American Revolution, to speak accurately 
and philosophically, was not a revolution at all. It 
was a resistance. 

The Americans did not propose to conquer new 
rights and privileges, but to defend old ones. 

The claim of Washington and Adams and Franklin 
and Jefferson and Jay and Schuyler and Wither- 
spoon was that the kings of England had estab- 
lished the colonies in certain liberties which the 
Parliament was endeavouring to take away. These 
liberties, the Americans asserted, belonged to them 
not only by natural right, but also by precedent 
and ancient tradition. The colonists claimed that 
the proposed reorganization of the colonies, which 
was undertaken by the British Parliament in 
1763, was an interruption of their history and a 
change in the established conditions of their life. 
They were unwilling to submit to it. They united 

20 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

and armed to prevent it. They took the position 
of men who were defending their inheritance of 
self-government against a war of [subjugation 
disguised as a new scheme of imperial legisla- 
tion. 

Whether they were right or wrong in making 
this claim, whether the arguments by which they 
supported it were sound or sophistical, we need not 
now consider. For the present, the point is that 
the claim was made, and that the making of it is 
one of the earliest and clearest revelations of the 
Spirit of America. 

No doubt in that struggle of defence which we 
are wont to call, for want of a better name, the 
Revolution, the colonists were carried by the irre- 
sistible force of events far beyond this position. 
The privilege of self-government which they claimed, 
the principle of "no taxation without representa- 
tion," appeared to them, at last, defensible and prac- 
ticable only on the condition of absolute separation 
from Great Britain. This separation implied sov- 
ereignty. This sovereignty demanded union. This 
union, by the logic of events, took the form of a 
republic. This republic continues to exist and to 
develop along the normal lines of its own nature, 
because it is still animated and controlled by the 
same Spirit of America which brought it into being 
to embody the soul of the people. 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

I am quite sure that there are few, even among 
Americans, who appreciate the literal truth and the 
full meaning of this last statement. It is common to 
assume that the Spirit of 1776 is an affair of the 
past; that the native American stock is swallowed 
up and lost in our mixed population; and that the 
new United States, beginning, let us say, at the close 
of the Civil War, is now controlled and guided by 
forces which have come to it from without. This is 
not true even physically, much less is it true intel- 
lectually and morally. 

The blended strains of blood which made the 
American people in the beginning are still the domi- 
nant factors in the American people of to-day. 
Men of distinction in science, art, and statesman- 
ship have come from abroad to cast their fortunes 
in with the republic, — men like Gallatin and Agassiz 
and Guyot and Lieber and McCosh and Carl Schurz, 
— and their presence has been welcomed, their 
service received with honour. Of the total popu- 
lation of the United States in 1900 more than 34 
per cent were of foreign birth or parentage. But 
the native stock has led and still leads America. 

There is a popular cyclopaedia of names, called 
Who's Who in America, which contains brief biog- 
raphies of some 16,395 living persons, who are sup- 
posed to be more or less distinguished, in one way 
or another, in the various regions in which they 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

live. It includes the representatives of foreign 
governments in the United States, and some foreign 
authors and business men. It is not necessary to 
imagine that all who are admitted to this quasi- 
golden book of " Who's- who-dom " are really great 
or widely famous. There are perhaps many of 
whom we might inquire, Which is who, and why is 
he somewhat? But, after all, the book includes 
most of the successful lawyers, doctors, merchants, 
bankers, preachers, politicians, authors, artists, and 
teachers, — the people who are most influential in 
their local communities and best known to their 
fellow-citizens. The noteworthy fact is that 86.07 
per cent are native Americans. I think that a care- 
ful examination of the record would show that a 
very large majority have at least three generations 
of American ancestry on one side or the other of 
the family. 

Of the men elected to the presidency of the 
United States there has been only one whose ances- 
tors did not belong to America before the Revolu- 
tion, — James Buchanan, whose father was a Scotch- 
Irish preacher who came to the New World in 1783. 
All but four of the Presidents of the United States 
could trace their line back to Americans of the 
seventeenth century. 

But it is not upon these striking facts of physical 
heredity that I would rest my idea of an American 

23 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

people, distinct and continuous, beginning a con- 
scious life at some time antecedent to 1764 and 
still guiding the development of the United States. 
I would lay far more stress upon intellectual and 
spiritual heredity, that strange process of moral 
generation by which the qualities of the Spirit of 
America have been communicated to millions of 
immigrants from all parts of the world. 

Since 1820 about twenty-six million persons have 
come to the United States from foreign lands. At 
the present moment, in a population which is esti- 
mated at about ninety millions, there are probably 
between thirteen and fifteen millions who are for- 
eign-born. It is an immense quantity for any nation 
to digest and assimilate, and it must be confessed 
that there are occasional signs of local dyspepsia in 
the large cities. But none the less it may be con- 
fidently affirmed that the foreign immigration of the 
past has been thoroughly transformed into Ameri- 
can material, and that the immigration of the pres- 
ent is passing through the same process without any 
alarming interruption. 

I can take you into quarters of New York where 
you might think yourself in a Russian Ghetto, or 
into regions of Pennsylvania which would seem to 
you like Hungarian mining towns. But if you will 
come with me into the public schools, where the chil- 
dren of these people of the Old World are gathered 

24 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

for education, you will find yourself in the midst 
of fairly intelligent and genuinely patriotic young 
Americans. They will salute the flag for you with 
enthusiasm. They will sing "Columbia" and "The 
Star Spangled Banner" with more vigour than har- 
mony. They will declaim Webster's apostrophe to 
the Union, or cry with Patrick Henry, " Give me 
liberty or give me death." 

What is more, they will really feel, in some dim 
but none the less vital way, the ideals for which 
these symbols stand. Give them time, and their 
inward allegiance will become clearer, they will 
begin to perceive how and why they are Ameri- 
cans. They will be among those wise children 
who know their own spiritual fathers. 

Last June it fell to my lot to deliver the com- 
mencement address at the College of the City of 
New York, a free institution which is the crown of 
the public school system of the city. Only a very 
small proportion of the scholars had names that you 
could call American, or even Anglo-Saxon. They 
were French and German, Polish and Italian, Rus- 
sian and Hebrew. Yet as I spoke on the subject 
of citizenship, suggested by the recent death of that 
great American, ex-President Grover Cleveland, the 
response was intelligent, immediate, unanimous, and 
eager. There was not one of that crowd of young 
men who would have denied or surrendered his 

25 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

right to trace his patriotic ancestry, his inherited 
share in the Spirit of America, back to Lincoln and 
Webster, Madison and Jefferson, Franklin and 
Washington, 

Here, then, is the proposition to which I dedicate 
these conferences. 

There is now, and there has been since before 
the Revolution, a Spirit of America, the soul of a 
people, and it is this which has made the United 
States and which still animates and controls them. 

I shall try to distinguish and describe a few, four 
or five of the essential features, qualities, ideals, — 
call them what you will, — the main elements of 
that spirit as I understand it. I shall also speak 
of two or three other traits, matters of temperament, 
perhaps, more than of character, which seem to me 
distinctly American. Then because I am neither a 
politician nor a jurist, I shall pass from the im- 
portant field of civil government and national in- 
stitutions, to consider some of the ways in which 
this soul of the American people has expressed 
itself in education and in social effort and in litera- 
ture. 

In following this course I venture to hope that it 
may be possible to correct, or at least to modify, 
some of the inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the 
popular view of America which prevails in some 
quarters of Europe. Perhaps I may be able to sug- 

26 



THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 

gest, even to Americans, some of the real sources of 
our national unity and strength, 

" Un Americain," says Andre Tardieu, in his 
recent book, "est toujours plus proche qu'on ne 
croit d'un contradicteur Americain." 

Why? 

That is what I hope to show in these lectures. I 
do not propose to argue for any creed, nor to win 
converts for any political theory. In these conferences 
I am not a propagandist, nor a preacher, nor an 
advocate. Not even a professor, strictly speaking. 
Just a man from America who is trying to make you 
feel the real spirit of his country, first in her life, then 
in her literature. I should be glad if in the end you 
might be able to modify the ancient proverb a little 
and say, Tout comprendre, c'est un peu aimer. 



27 



II 
self-relian('p: and ttte re- 

I'UHLIC 



I 



II 

SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

The other day I came upon a new book with a 
title which seemed to take a good ideal for granted : 
The New American Type. 

The author began with a description of a recent 
exhibition of portraits in New York, including pic- 
tures of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth 
centuries. He was impressed with the idea that 
"an astonishing change had taken place in men 
and women between the time of President Wash- 
ington and President McKinley; bodies, faces, 
thoughts, had all been transformed. One short 
stairway from the portraits of Reynolds to those of 
Sargent ushered in changes as if it had stretched 
from the first Pharaoh to the last Ptolemy." From 
this interesting text the author went on into an 
acute and sparkling discussion of the diflferent pic- 
tures and the personalities whom they presented, 
and so into an attempt to define the new type of 
American character which he inferred from the 
modem portraits. 

Now it had been my good fortune, only a little 
31 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

while before, to see another exhibition of pictures 
which made upon my mind a directly contrary im- 
pression. This was not a collection of paintings, 
but a show of living pictures : a Twelfth Night cele- 
bration, in costume, at the Century Club in New 
York. Four or five hundred of the best-known and 
most influential men in the metropolis of America 
had arrayed themselves in the habiliments of vari- 
ous lands and ages for an evening of fun and frolic. 
There were travellers and explorers who had brought 
home the robes of the Orient. There were men of 
exuberant fancy who had made themselves up as 
Roman senators or Spanish toreadors or Provencal 
troubadours. But most of the costumes were Eng- 
lish or Dutch or French of the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries. The astonishing thing was 
that the men who wore them might easily have been 
taken for their own grandfathers or great-grand- 
fathers. 

There was a Puritan who might have fled from 
the oppressions of Archbishop Laud, a Cavalier who 
might have sought a refuge from the severities of 
Cromwell's Parliament, a Huguenot who might 
have escaped from the pressing attentions of Louis 
XIV in the Dragonnades, a Dutch burgher who 
might have sailed from Amsterdam in the Goede 
Vrouw. There were soldiers of the Colonial army 
and members of the Continental Congress who 

32 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

might have been painted by Copley or Stuart or 
Trumbull or Peale. 

The types of the faces were not essentially dif- 
ferent. There was the same strength of bony struc- 
ture, the same firmness of outline, the same expres- 
sion of self-reliance, varying from the tranquillity of 
the quiet temperament to the turbulence of the 
stormy temperament. They looked like men who 
were able to take care of themselves, who knew 
what they wanted, and who would be likely to get 
it. They had the veritable air and expression of 
their ancestors of one or two hundred years ago. 
And yet, as a matter of fact, they were intensely 
modern Americans, typical New Yorkers of the 
twentieth century. 

Reflecting upon this interesting and rather pleas- 
ant experience, I was convinced that the author of 
The New American Type had allowed his imagi- 
nation to run away with his judgment. No such 
general and fundamental change as he describes has 
really taken place. There have been modifications 
and developments and degenerations, of course, 
under the new conditions and influences of modern 
life. There have been also great changes of fashion 
and dress, — the wearing of mustaches and beards, 
— the discarding of wigs and ruffles, — the sacrifice 
of a somewhat fantastic elegance to a rather mo- 
notonous comfort in the ordinary costume of men. 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

These things have confused and misled my ingenious 
author. 

He has been bewildered also by the alteration in 
the methods of portraiture. He has mistaken a 
change in the art of the painters for a change in 
the character of their subjects. It is a well-known 
fact that something comes into a portrait from the 
place and the manner in which it is made. I have 
a collection of pictures of Charles Dickens, and it 
is interesting to observe how the Scotch ones make 
him look a little like a Scotchman, and the London 
ones make him look intensely English, and the 
American ones give him a touch of Broadway in 
1845, and the photographs made in Paris have an 
unmistakable suggestion of the Boulevards. There 
is a great difference between the spirit and method 
of Reynolds, Hoppner, Latour, Vanloo, and those 
of Sargent, Holl, Duran, Bonnat, Alexander, and 
Zorn. It is this difference that helps to conceal the 
essential likeness of their sitters. 

I was intimately acquainted with Benjamin 
Franklin's great-grandson, a surgeon in the Ameri- 
can navy. Put a fur cap and knee breeches on 
him, and he might easily have sat for his great- 
grandfather's portrait. In character there was a 
still closer resemblance. You can see the same 
faces at any banquet in New York to-day that 
Rembrandt has depicted in his " Night-Watch," 

34 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

or Franz Hals in his " Banquet of the Civic 
Guard." 

But there is something which interests me even 
more than this persistence of visible ancestral 
features in the Americans of to-day. It is the con- 
tinuance from generation to generation of the main 
lines, the essential elements, of that American char- 
acter which came into being on the Western continent. 

It is commonly assumed that this character is 
composite, that the people who inhabit America 
are a mosaic, made up of fragments brought from 
various lands and put together rather at haphazard 
and in a curious pattern. This assumption misses 
the inward verity by dwelling too much upon the 
outward fact. 

Undoubtedly there were large and striking differ- 
ences between the grave and strict Puritans who 
peopled the shores of Massachusetts Bay, the pleasure- 
loving Cavaliers who made their tobacco plantations 
in Virginia, the liberal and comfortable Hollanders 
who took possession of the lands along the Hudson, 
the skilful and industrious Frenchmen who came 
from old Rochelle to New Rochelle, the peaceful 
and prudent Quakers who followed William Penn, 
the stolid Germans of the Rhine who made their 
farms along the Susquehanna, the vigorous and 
aggressive Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who became 
the pioneers of western Pennsylvania and North 

35 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

Carolina, the tolerant Catholics who fled from 
English persecution to Lord Baltimore's Maryland. 
But these outward differences of speech, of dress, 
of habits, of tradition, were, after all, of less practical 
consequence than the inward resemblances and 
sympathies of spirit which brought these men of 
different stocks together as one people. 

They were not a composite people, but a blended 
people. They became in large measure conscious 
of the same aims, loyal to the same ideals, and 
capable of fighting and working together as Ameri- 
cans to achieve their destiny. 

I suppose that the natural process of intermar- 
riage played an important part in this blending of 
races. This is an affair to which the conditions of 
life in a new country, on the frontiers of civilization, 
are peculiarly favourable. Love flourishes when 
there are no locksmiths. In a community of exiles 
the inclinations of the young men towards the young 
women easily overstep the barriers of language and 
descent. Quite naturally the English and Scotch 
were united with the Dutch and French in the holy 
state of matrimony, and the mothers had as much 
to do as the fathers with the character-building of 
the children. 

But apart from this natural process of combina- 
tion there were other influences at work bringing 
the colonists into unity. There was the pressure of 

36 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

a common necessity — the necessity of taking care 
of themselves, of making their own living in a hard, 
new world. There was the pressure of a common 
danger — the danger from the fierce and treacherous 
savages who surrounded them and continually 
threatened them with pillage and slaughter. There 
was the pressure of a common discipline — the dis- 
cipline of building up an organized industry, a 
civilized community in the wilderness. 

Yet I doubt whether even these potent forces of 
compression, of fusion, of metamorphosis, would 
have made one people of the colonists quite so 
quickly, quite so thoroughly, if it had not been for 
certain affinities of spirit, certain ideals and pur- 
poses which influenced them all, and which made 
the blending easier and more complete. 

Most of the colonists of the seventeenth century, 
you will observe, were people who in one way or 
another had suffered for their religious convictions, 
whether they were Puritans or Catholics, Episco- 
palians or Presbyterians, Quakers or Anabaptists. 

The almost invariable effect of suffering for religion 
is to deepen its power and to intensify the desire for 
liberty to practise it. 

It is true that other motives, the love of adven- 
ture, the desire to attain prosperity in the affairs of 
this world, and in some cases the wish to escape 
from the consequences of misconduct or misfortune 

37 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

in the old country, played a part in the settlement 
of America. Nothing could be more absurd than 
the complacent assumption that all the ancestors 
from whom the "Colonial Dames" or the "Sons of 
the Revolution" delight to trace their descent were 
persons of distinguished character and fervent piety. 

But the most characteristic element of the early 
emigration was religious, and that not by convention 
and conformity, but by conscience and conviction. 
There was less difference among the various colonies 
in this respect than is generally imagined. The 
New Englanders, who have written most of the 
American histories, have been in the way of claim- 
ing the lion's share of the religious influence for the 
Puritans. But while Massachusetts was a religious 
colony with commercial tendencies. New Amsterdam 
was a commercial colony with religious principles. 

The Virginia parson prayed by the book, and the 
Pennsylvania Quaker made silence the most im- 
portant part of his ritual, but alike on the banks 
of the James and on the shores of the Delaware the 
ultimate significance and value of life were inter- 
preted in terms of religion. 

Now one immediate effect of such a ground-tone 
of existence is to increase susceptibility and devo- 
tion to ideals. The habit of referring constantly to 
religious sanctions is one that carries with it a ten- 
dency to intensify the whole motive power of life in 

38 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

relation to its inward conceptions of what is right 
and desirable. Men growing up in such an atmos- 
phere may easily become fanatical, but they are not 
likely to be feeble. 

Moreover, the American colonists, by the very 
conditions of natural selection which brought them 
together, must have included more than the usual 
proportion of strong wills, resolute and independent 
characters, people who knew what they wanted to 
do and were willing to accept needful risks and 
hardships in order to do it. The same thing, at 
least to some extent, holds good of the later immi- 
gration into the United States. 

Most of the immigrants must have been rich in 
personal energy, clear in their conviction of what 
was best for them to do. Otherwise they would 
have lacked the force to break old ties, to brave 
the sea, to face the loneliness and uncertainty 
of life in a strange land. Discontent with their 
former condition acted upon them not as a depress- 
ant but as a tonic. The hope of something unseen, 
untried, was a stimulus to which their wills reacted. 
Whatever misgivings or reluctances they may have 
had, upon the whole they were more attracted than 
repelled by the prospect of shaping a new life for 
themselves, according to their own desire, in a land 
of liberty, opportunity, and difficulty. 

We come thus to the first and most potent factor 

39 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

in the soul of the American people, the spirit of self- 
reliance. This was the dominant and formative 
factor of their early history. It was the inward 
power which animated and sustained them in their 
first struggles and efforts. It was deepened by 
religious conviction and intensified by practical ex- 
perience. It took shape in political institutions, 
declarations, constitutions. It rejected foreign guid- 
ance and control, and fought against all external 
domination. It assumed the right of self-determi- 
nation, and took for granted the power of self- 
development. In the ignorant and noisy it was 
aggressive, independent, cocksure, and boastful. 
In the thoughtful and prudent it was grave, firm, 
resolute, and inflexible. It has persisted through all 
the changes and growth of two centuries, and it re- 
mains to-day the most vital and irreducible quality 
in the soul of America, — the spirit of self-reliance. 
You may hear it in its popular and somewhat 
vulgar form — not without a characteristic touch 
of humour — in the Yankee's answer to the inti- 
mation of an Englishman that if the United States 
did not behave themselves well. Great Britain would 
come over and whip them. "What!" said the 
Yankee, "ag'in?" You may hear it in deeper, 
saner, wiser tones, in Lincoln's noble asseveration 
on the battle-field of Gettysburg, that "government 
of the people, by the people, for the people shall 

40 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

not perish from the earth." But however or when- 
ever you hear it, the thing which it utters is the 
same, — the inward conviction of a people that 
they have the right and the abihty, and consequently 
the duty, to regulate their own life, to direct their 
own property, and to pursue their own happiness 
according to the light which they possess. 

It is obvious that one may give different names 
to this spirit, according to the circumstances in 
which it is manifested and observed. It may be 
called the spirit of independence when it is shown 
in opposition to forces of external control. Pro- 
fessor Barrett Wendell, speaking from this chair 
four years ago, said that the first ideal to take form 
in the American consciousness was "the ideal of 
Liberty." But his well-balanced mind compelled 
him immediately to limit and define this ideal as a 
desire for "the political freedom of America from 
all control, from all coercion, from all interference 
by any power foreign to our own American selves." 
And what is this but self-reliance? 

Professor Miinsterberg, in his admirable book. The 
Americans, calls it "the spirit of self-direction." He 
traces its influence in the development of American 
institutions and the structure of American life. He 
says: "Whoever wishes to understand the secret of 
that baffiing turmoil, the inner mechanism and motive 
behind all the politically effective forces, must set 

41 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

out from only one point. He must appreciate the 
yearning of the American heart after self-direction. 
Everything else is to be understood from this." 

But this yearning after seli-direclion, it seems to 
me, is not peculiar to Americans. All men have 
more or less of it by nature. All men yearn to be 
their own masters, to shape their own life, to direct 
their own course. The difference among men lies 
in the clearness and the vigour with which they con- 
ceive their own right and power and duty so to do. 

Back of the temper of independence, back of the 
passion for liberty, back of the yearning after self- 
direction, stands the spirit of self-reliance, from 
which alone they derive force and permanence. It 
was this spirit that made America, and it is this 
spirit that preserves the republic. Emerson has 
expressed it in a sentence: "We will walk on our 
own feet; we will work with our own hands; we 
will speak our own minds." 

It is undoubtedly true that the largest influence 
in the development of this spirit came from the 
Puritans and Pilgrims of the New England colonies, 
bred under the bracing and strengthening power of 
that creed which bears the name of a great French- 
man, John Calvin, and trained in that tremendous 
sense of personal responsibility which so often carries 
with it an intense feeling of personal value and 
force. Yet, after all, if we look at the matter closely, 

42 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

we shall see that there was no very great difference 
among the colonists of various stocks and regions 
in regard to their confidence in themselves and their 
feeling that they both could and should direct their 
own affairs. 

The Virginians, languishing and fretting under 
the first arbitrary rule of the London corporation 
which controlled them with military severity, ob- 
tained a "Great Charter of Privileges, Orders, and 
Laws" in 1618. This gave to the little body of 
settlers, about a thousand in number, the right of 
electing their own legislative assembly, and thus laid 
the foundation of representative government in the 
New World. A little later, in 1623, fearing that the 
former despotism might be renewed, the Virginia 
Assembly sent a message to the king, saying, "Rather 
than be reduced to live under the like government, 
we desire his Majesty that commissioners be sent 
over to hang us." 

In 1624 the Virginia Company was dissolved, 
and the colony passed under a royal charter, but 
they still preserved and cherished the rights of 
self-rule in all local affairs, and developed an ex- 
traordinary temper of jealousy and resistance tow- 
ards the real or imagined encroachments of the 
governors who were sent out by the king. In 1676 
the Virginians practically rebelled against the au- 
thority of Great Britain because they conceived that 

43 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

they were being reduced to a condition of depend- 
ence and servitude. They felt confident that they 
were able to make their own laws and to choose 
their own leaders. They were distinctly not con- 
scious of any inferiority to their brethren in Eng- 
land, and with their somewhat aristocratic ten- 
dencies they developed a set of men like Lee and 
Henry and Washington and Bland and Jefferson 
and Harrison, who had more real power than any of 
the royal governors. 

In New Amsterdam, where the most liberal 
policy in regard to the reception of immigrants pre- 
vailed, but where for a long time there was little 
or no semblance of popular government, the in- 
habitants rebelled in 1649 against the tyranny of 
the agents of the Dutch West India Company which 
ruled them from across the sea, — ruled them fairly 
well, upon the whole, but still denied free play to 
their spirit of self-reliance. The conflicts between 
the bibulous and dubious Director van Twiller and 
his neighbours, between the fiery and arbitrary 
William Kieft and his Eight Men, between the 
valiant, obstinate, hot-tempered, and dictatorial Peter 
Stuyvesant and his Nine Men, have been humor- 
ously narrated by Washington Irving in his Knicker- 
bocker. But underneath the burlesque chronicle of 
bickerings and wranglings, complaints and protests, 
it is easy to see the stirrings of the sturdy spirit 

44 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

which confides in self and desires to have control 
of its own affairs. 

In 1649 the Vertoogh or Remonstrance of the 
Seven Men representing the burghers of Manhattan, 
Brewckelen, Amersfoort, and Pavonia was sent to 
the States General of the Netherlands. It demanded 
first that their High Mightinesses should turn out 
the West India Company and take direct control of 
the New Netherlands; second, that a proper mu- 
nicipal government should be granted to New Amster- 
dam ; and third, that the boundaries of the province 
should be settled by treaty with friendly powers. 
This document also called attention, by way of 
example, to the freedom of their neighbours in New 
England, "where neither patrouns, nor lords, nor 
princes are known, but only the people." The 
West India Company was powerful enough to resist 
these demands for a time, but in 1653 New Amster- 
dam was incorporated as a city. 

Ten years later it passed under English sovereignty, 
and the history of New York began. One of its 
first events was the protest of certain towns on Long 
Island against a tax which was laid upon them in 
order to pay for the repair of the fort in New York. 
They appealed to the principle of "no taxation 
without representation," which they claimed had 
been declared alike by England and by the Dutch 
republic. For nearly twenty years, however, this 

45 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

appeal and others like it were disregarded, until at 
last the spirit of self-reliance became irresistible. 
A petition was sent to the Duke of York declaring 
that the lack of a representative assembly was "an 
intolerable grievance." The Duke, it is said, was 
out of patience with his uneasy province, which 
brought him in no revenue except complaints and 
protests. "I have a mind to sell it," said he, "to 
any one who will give me a fair price." "What," 
cried his friend William Penn, " sell New York ! 
Don't think of such a thing. Just give it self-gov- 
ernment, and there will be no more trouble." The 
Duke listened to the Quaker, and in 1683 the first 
Assembly of New York was elected. 

The charters which were granted by the Stuart 
kings to the American colonies were for the most 
part of an amazingly liberal character. No doubt 
the royal willingness to see restless and intractable 
subjects leave England had something to do with 
this liberality. But the immediate effect of it was 
to encourage the spirit of self-reliance. In some of 
the colonies, as in Connecticut and Rhode Island, the 
people elected their own governors as well as made 
their own laws. When Governor Fletcher of New 
York found the people of Connecticut unwilling to 
comply with his demands in 1693, he wrote back 
to England angrily: "The laws of England have no 
effect in this colony. They set up for a free state." 

46 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

Even in those colonies where the governors and 
the judges were appointed by the crown, the people 
were quick to suspect and bitter to resent any in- 
vasion of their liberties or contradiction of their 
will as expressed through the popular assemblies; 
and these assemblies prudently retained, as a check 
upon executive authority, the right of voting, and 
paying, or not paying, the salaries of the governor 
and other officers. 

The policy of Great Britain in regard to the 
American dependencies, while it vacillated some- 
what, was, in the main, to leave them quite inde- 
pendent. Various motives may have played a part 
at different times in this policy. Indifference and a 
feeling of contempt may have had something to do 
with it. English liberalism and republican sym- 
pathy may have had something to do with it. A 
shrewd willingness to let them prosper by their own 
efforts, in their own way, in order that they might 
make a better market for English manufactures, 
may have had something to do with it. Thus Lord 
Morley tells us: "Walpole was content with seeing 
that no trouble came from America. He left it to 
the Duke of Newcastle, and the Duke left it so 
much to itself that he had a closet full of despatches 
from American governors, which had lain unopened 
for years." 

But whatever may have been the causes of this 
47 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

policy, its effect was to intensify and spread the 
spirit of self-reliance among the people of America. 
A group of communities grew up along the west- 
ern shore of the Atlantic which formed the habit of 
defending themselves, of developing their own re- 
sources, of regulating their own affairs. It has 
been well said that they were colonies only in the 
Greek sense: communities which went forth from 
the mother-country like children from a home, to 
establish a self-sustaining and equal life. They 
were not colonies in the Roman sense, suburbs of 
the empire, garrisoned and ruled from the sole 
centre of authority. 

They felt, all of them, that they understood their 
own needs, their own opportunities, their own 
duties, their own dangers and hopes, better than 
any one else could understand them. "Those who 
feel," said Franklin, when he appeared before the 
committee of Parhament in London, "can best 
judge." They issued money, they made laws and 
constitutions, they raised troops, they built roads, 
they established schools and colleges, they levied 
taxes, they developed commerce, — and this last 
they did to a considerable extent in violation or 
evasion of the English laws of navigation. 

They acknowledged, indeed they fervently pro- 
tested, for a long time, their allegiance to Great 
Britain and their loyalty to the crown; but they 

48 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

conceived their allegiance as one of equality, and 
their loyalty as a voluntary sentiment largely in- 
fluenced by gratitude for the protection which the 
king gave them in the rights of internal self-govern- 
ment. 

This self-reliant spirit extended from the colonies 
into the townships and counties of which they were 
composed. Each little settlement, each flourishing 
village and small city, had its own local interests, 
and felt the wish and the ability to manage them. 
And in these communities every man was apt to be 
conscious of his own importance, his own value, his 
own ability and right to contribute to the discussion 
and settlement of local problems. 

The conditions of life, also, had developed certain 
qualities in the colonists which persisted and led to 
a general temper of personal independence and self- 
confidence. The men who had cleared the forests, 
fought off the Indians, made homes in the wilder- 
ness, were inclined to think themselves capable de 
tout. They valued their freedom to prove this as 
their most precious asset. 

"I have some little property in America," said 
Franklin. "I will freely spend nineteen shillings 
in the pound to defend the right of giving or refus- 
ing the other shilling; and, after all, if I cannot 
defend that right, I can retire cheerfully with my 
little family into the boundless woods of America, 
E 49 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

which are sure to furnish freedom and subsistence 
to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trigger." 
It is rather startling to think of Franklin as gaining 
his living as a hunter or a fisherman ; but no doubt 
he could have done it. 

The wonderful prosperity and the amazing growth 
of the colonies fostered this spirit of self-reliance. 
Their wealth was increasing more rapidly, in pro- 
portion, than the wealth of England. Their popu- 
lation grew from an original stock of perhaps a 
hundred thousand immigrants to two million in 
1776, a twenty-fold advance; while in the same 
period of time England had only grown from five 
millions to eight millions, less than twofold. 

The conflicts with the French power in Canada 
also had a powerful influence in consolidating the 
colonies and teaching them their strength. The 
first Congress in which they were all invited to take 
part was called in New York in 1690 to cooperate 
in war measures against Canada. Three long, 
costly, and bloody French-Indian wars, in which 
the colonists felt they bore the brunt of the burden 
and the fighting, drew them closer together, made 
them conscious of their common interests and of 
their resources. 

But their victory in the last of these wars had 
also another effect. It opened the way for a change 
of policy on the part of Great Britain towards her 

SO 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

American colonies, — a change which involved 
their reorganization, their subordination to the au- 
thority of the British Parliament, and the "weav- 
ing" of them, as ex-Governor Pownall put it, into 
"a grand marine dominion consisting of our pos- 
sessions in the Atlantic and in America imited into 
one empire, into one centre where the seat of govern- 
ment is." This was undoubtedly imperialism. 
And it was because the Americans felt this that 
the spirit of self-reliance rose against the new policy 
and stubbornly resisted every step, even the small- 
est, which seemed to them to lead in the direction 
of subjugation and dependency. 

Followed ten years of acrimonious and violent 
controversy and eight years of war, — about what ? 
The Stamp Act? the Paint, Paper, and Glass Act? 
the Tax on Tea? the Boston Port Bill? 

No; but at bottom about the right and intention 
of the colonies to continue to direct themselves. 
You cannot possibly understand the American 
Revolution unless you understand this. And with- 
out an understanding of the causes and the nature 
of the Revolution, you cannot comprehend the 
United States of to-day. 

Take, for example, the division of opinion among 
the colonists themselves, — a division far more 
serious and far more nearly equal in numbers than 
is commonly supposed. It was not true, as the 

SI 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

popular histories of the Revolution used to assume, 
that all the brave, the wise, the virtuous, and the 
honest were on one side, and all the cowardly, the 
selfish, the base, and the insincere were on the other. 
There was probably as much sincerity and virtue 
among the loyalists as among the patriots. There 
was certainly as much intelligence and education 
among the patriots as among the loyalists. The 
difference was this. The loyalists were, for the 
most part, families and individuals who had been 
connected, socially and industrially, with the royal 
source of power and order, through the governors 
and other officials who came from England or were 
appointed there. Naturally they felt that the pro- 
tection, guidance, and support of England were in- 
dispensable to the colonies. The patriots were, for 
the most part, families and individuals whose inti- 
mate relations had been with the colonial assem- 
blies, with the popular efforts for self-development 
and self-rule, with the movements which tended to 
strengthen their confidence in their own powers. 
Naturally they felt that freedom of action, deliverance 
from external control, and the fullest opportunity 
of self-guidance were indispensable to the colonies. 

The names chosen by the two parties — " loyal- 
ist" and "patriot" — were both honourable, and 
seem at first sight almost synonymous. But there is 
a delicate shade of difference in their inward sig- 

52 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

nificance. The loyalist is one who sincerely owns 
allegiance to a sovereign power, which may be 
external to him, but to which he feels bound to be 
loyal. The patriot is one who has found his own 
country, of which he is a part, and for which he is 
willing to live and die. It was because the patriotic 
party appealed primarily to the spirit of self-reliance 
that they carried the majority of the American 
people with them, and won the victory, not only in 
the internal conflict, but also in the war of inde- 
pendence. 

I am not ignorant nor unmindful of the part 
which European philosophers and political theorists 
played in supplying the patriotic party in America 
with logical arguments and philosophic reasons for 
the practical course which they followed. The doc- 
trines of John Locke and Algernon Sidney were 
congenial and sustaining to men who had already 
resolved to govern themselves. From Holland aid 
and comfort came in the works of Grotius. Italy 
gave inspiration and support in the books of Bec- 
caria and Burlamaqui on the essential principles of 
liberty. The French intellect, already preparing for 
another revolution, did much to clarify and ration- 
alize American thought through the sober and 
searching writings of Montesquieu, and perhaps 
even more to supply it with enthusiastic eloquence 
through the dithyrambic theories of Rousseau. The 

53 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

doctrines of natural law, and the rights of man, 
and the pursuit of happiness, were freely used by 
the patriotic orators to enforce their appeals to the 
people. It is impossible not to recognize the voice 
of the famous Genevese in the words of Alexander 
Plamilton: "The sacred rights of men are not to 
be rummaged for among old parchments or musty 
records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the 
whole volume of human nature by the hand of divin- 
ity itself, and can never be erased by mortal power." 

But it still remains true that the mainspring of 
American independence is not to be found in any 
philosophic system or in any political theory. It 
was a vital impulse, a common sentiment in the 
soul of a people conscious of the ability and the 
determination to manage their own affairs. The 
logic which they followed was the logic of events 
and results. They were pragmatists. The spirit 
of self-reliance led them on, reluctantly, inevitably, 
step by step, through remonstrance, recalcitrance, 
resistance, until they came to the republic. 

"Permit us to be as free as yourselves," they said 
to the people of Great Britain, "and we shall ever 
esteem a union with you to be our greatest glory 
and our greatest happiness." "No," answered Par- 
liament. "Protect us as a loving father," they said 
to the king, "and forbid a licentious ministry any 
longer to riot in the ruins of mankind." "No," 

54 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

answered the king. "Very well, then," said the 
colonists, "we are, and of right ought to be, free 
and independent. We have governed ourselves. 
We are able to govern ourselves. We shall con- 
tinue to govern ourselves, under such forms as we 
already possess; and when these are not sufficient, 
we will make such forms as shall, in the opinion of 
the representatives of the people, best conduce to the 
happiness and safety of their constituents in particu- 
lar and of America in general.' ' 

This resolution of the Continental Congress, on 
May lo, 1776, gives the key-note of all subsequent 
American history. Republicanism was not adopted 
because it was the only conceivable, or rational, or 
legitimate, form of government. It was continued, 
enlarged, organized, consolidated, because it was 
the form in which the spirit of self-reliance in the 
whole people found itself most at home, most happy 
and secure. 

The federal Union of the States was established, 
after long and fierce argument, under the pressure 
of necessity, because it was evidently the only way 
to safeguard the permanence and freedom of those 
States, as well as to "establish justice, ensure do- 
mestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, 
promote the general welfare, and secure the bless- 
ings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." 

The Amendments to the Constitution which were 

55 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

adopted in 1791 (and without the promise of which the 
original document never would have been accepted) 
were of the nature of a Bill of Rights, securing to 
every citizen liberty of conscience and speech, pro- 
tection against arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, or 
deprivation of property, and especially reserving to 
the respective States or to the people all powers not 
delegated to the United States. 

The division of the general government into three 
branches — legislative, executive, and judicial; the 
strict delimitation of the powers committed to these 
three branches; the careful provision of checks and 
counterchecks intended to prevent the predominance 
of any one branch over the others ; all these are fea- 
tures against which political theorists and philoso- 
phers may bring, and have brought, strong arguments. 
They hinder quick action; they open the way to 
contests of authority ; they are often a serious draw- 
back in international diplomacy. But they express 
the purpose of a self-reliant people not to let the 
ultimate power pass from their hands to any one of 
the instruments which they have created. And for 
this purpose they have worked well, and are still in 
working order. For this reason the Americans are 
proud of them to a degree which other nations 
sometimes think unreasonable, and attached to 
them with a devotion which other nations do not 
always understand. 

56 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

Do not mistake me. In saying that American 
republicanism is not the product of philosophical 
argument, of abstract theory, of reasoned convic- 
tion, I do not mean to say that Americans do not 
believe in it. They do. 

Now and then you will find one of them who says 
that he would prefer a monarchy or an aristocracy. 
But you may be sure that he is an eccentric, or a man 
with a grievance against the custom-house, or a fond 
person who feels confident of his own place in the royal 
family or at least in the nobility. You may safely 
leave him out in trying to understand the real Spirit 
of America. 

The people as a whole believe in the republic 
very firmly, and at times very passionately. And 
the vital reason for this belief is because it springs 
out of life and is rooted in life. It comes from 
that spirit of self-reliance which has been and is 
still the strongest American characteristic, in the 
individual, the community, and the nation. 

It seems to me that we must apprehend this in 
order to comprehend many things that are funda- 
mental in the life of America and the character of 
her people. Let me speak of a few of these things, 
and try to show how they have their roots in this 
quality of self-reliance. 

Take, for example, the singular political construc- 
57 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

tion of the nation, — a thing which Europeans find 
it almost impossible to understand without a long 
residence in America. It is a united countrj' com- 
posed of States which have a distinct individual life 
and a carefully guarded sovereignty. 

Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Illinois, 
Texas, California, even the little States like Rhode 
Island and Maryland, are political entities just as 
real, just as conscious of their own being, as the United 
States, of which each of them forms an integral part. 
They have their own laws, their own courts, their 
own systems of domestic taxation, their own flags, 
their own militia, their own schools and universi- 
ties. "The American citizen," Professor Miinster- 
berg rightly says, " in daily life is first of all a mem- 
ber of his special State." 

This distinction of local life is not to be traced to 
an original allegiance to different owners or lords, a 
duke of Savoy or Burgundy, a king of Prussia or 
Saxony. It is quite unlike the difference among the 
provinces of the French republic or the states of the 
German Empire. It is primarily the result of a local 
spirit of self-reliance, a habit of self-direction, in the 
people who have worked together to build up these 
States, to develop their resources, to give them shape 
and substance. This is the true explanation of State 
pride, and of the sense of an individual life in the 
different commonwealths which compose the nation. 

58 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

Every one knows that this feeh'ng was so strong 
immediately after the Revolution that it nearly 
made the Union impossible. Every one knows 
that this feeling was so strong in the middle of the 
nineteenth century that it nearly destroyed the 
Union. But every one does not know that this 
feeling is still extant and active, — an essential and 
potent factor in the political life of America. 

The Civil War settled once for all the open and 
long-disputed question of the nature of the tie which 
binds the States together. The Union may be a 
compact, but it is an indissoluble compact. The 
United States is not a confederacy. It is a nation. 
Yet the local sovereignty of the States which it em- 
braces has not been touched. The spirit of self- 
reliance in each commonwealth guards its rights 
jealously, and the law of the nation protects them. 

It was but a little while ago that a proposal 
was made in Congress to unite the territories of 
Arizona and New Mexico and admit them to the 
Union as one State. But the people of Arizona pro- 
tested. They did not wish to be mixed up with 
people of New Mexico, for whom they professed 
dislike and even contempt. They would rather 
stay out than come in under such conditions. The 
protest was sufficient to block the proposed action. 

I have been reading lately a series of recent deci- 
sions by the Supreme Court, touching on various 

59 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

questions, like the right of one State to make the 
C.O.D, shipment of whiskey from another State a 
penal offence, or the right of the United States to 
interfere with the State of Colorado in the use of 
the water of the Arkansas River for purposes of 
irrigation. In all of these decisions, whether on 
whiskey or on water, I find that the great principle 
laid down by Chief Justice Marshall is clearly ad- 
mitted and sustained: "The Government of the 
United States is one of enumerated powers." Further 
powers can be obtained only by a new grant from 
the people. "One cardinal rule," says Justice 
Brewer, "underlying all the relations of the States 
to each other is that of equality of right. Each 
State stands on the same level with all the rest. It 
can impose its own legislation on none of the others, 
and is bound to yield its own views to none." 

Now it is evident that this peculiar structure of 
the nation necessarily permits, perhaps implies, a 
constant rivalry between two forms of the spirit of 
self-reliance, — the local form and the general form. 

Emphasize the one, and you have a body of 
public opinion which moves in the direction of 
strengthening, enhancing, perhaps enlarging, the 
powers given to the central government. Empha- 
size the other, and you have a body of public 
opinion which opposes every encroachment upon 
the powers reserved to the local governments, and 

60 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

seeks to strengthen the whole by fortifying the parts 
of which it is composed. 

Here you have the two great poh'tical parties of 
America. They are called to-day the Republican 
and the Democratic. But the names mean noth- 
ing. In fact, the party which now calls itself Demo- 
cratic bore the name of Republican down to 1832; 
and those who were called successively Federalists 
and Whigs did not finally take the name of Repub- 
licans until i860. In reality, political opinion, or 
perhaps it would be more correct to say political 
feeling, divides on this great question of the centrali- 
zation or the division of power. The controversy 
lies between the two forms of the spirit of self- 
reliance; that which, is embodied in the conscious- 
ness of the whole nation and that which is embodied 
in the consciousness of each community. The 
Democrats naturally speak for the latter; the Re- 
publicans for the former. 

Of course in our campaigns and elections the 
main issue is often confused and beclouded. New 
problems and disputes arise in which the bearing of 
proposed measures is not clear. The parties have 
come to be great physical organizations, with vested 
interests to defend, with an outward life to perpetu- 
ate. Like all human institutions, both of them 
have the instinct of self-preservation. They both 
try to follow the tide of popular sentiments. They 

61 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

both insert planks in their platforms which seem 
likely to win votes. Sometimes they both hit upon 
the same planks, and it is very difficult to determine 
the original ownership. 

At present, for example, the great industrial and 
commercial trusts and corporations are very un- 
popular. The Democrats and the Republicans both 
declare their intention to correct and restrain them. 
Each party claims to be the original friend of the 
people, the real St. George who will certainly slay 
the Dragon of Trusts. Thus we have had the amus- 
ing spectacle of Mr. Bryan commending and prais- 
ing Mr. Roosevelt for his conversion to truly Demo- 
cratic principles and policies, and adding that the 
Democrats were the right men to carry them out, 
while Mr. Taft insisted that the popular measures 
were essentially Republican, and that his party was 
the only one which could be trusted to execute them 
wisely and safely. 

But, in spite of these temporary bewilderments, 
you will find, in the main, that the RepubHcans 
have a tendency towards centralizing measures, 
and therefore incline to favour national banks, a 
protective tariff, enlargement of executive functions, 
colonial expansion, a greater naval and military 
establishment, and a consequent increase of national 
expenditure; while the Democrats, as a rule, are on 
the side of non-centralizing measures, and therefore 

62 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

inclined to favour a large and elastic currency, free 
trade or tariff for revenue only, strict interpretation 
of the Constitution, an army and navy sufficient for 
police purposes, a progressive income tax, and a 
general policy of national economy. 

The important thing to remember is that these 
two forms of the spirit of self-reliance, the general 
and the local, still exist side by side in American 
political life, and that it is probably a good thing to 
have them represented in two great parties, in order 
that a due balance may be kept between them. 

The tendency to centralization has been in the 
lead, undoubtedly, during the last forty years. It is 
in accord with what is called the spirit of the age. 
But the other tendency is still deep and strong in 
America, — stronger I believe than anywhere else 
in the world. The most valuable rights of the 
citizen (except in territories and colonies), his per- 
sonal freedom, family relations, and property, are 
still protected mainly by the State in which he lives 
and of which he is a member, — a State which is 
politically unknown to any foreign nation, and 
which exists only for the other States which are 
united with it ! 

A curious condition of affairs ! Yet it is real. It 
is historically accountable. It belongs to the Spirit 
of America. For the people of that country think 
with Tocqueville that "Those who dread the 

63 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

license of the mob, and those who fear absolute 
power, ought alike to desire the gradual develop- 
ment of provincial liberties." 

This is the way in which America was made. 
This is how Americans wish to keep it. An attempt 
of either party in power to destroy the principle for 
which the other stands would certainly fail. The 
day when it seemed possible to dissolve the Union 
is past. The day when the Union will absorb and 
obliterate the States is not in sight. 

But it is not only in this relation of the States 
and the nation that you may see the workings of 
the spirit of which I am speaking. Within each 
State the spirit of self-reliance is developed and 
cherished in city, county, and township. Public im- 
provements, roads and streets, police, education, — 
these are the important things which, as a rule, the 
State leaves to the local community. The city, the 
county, the township, attend to them. They must 
be paid for out of the local pocket. And the local 
talent of the citizens feels able and entitled to regu- 
late them. Sometimes it is well done. Sometimes 
it is very badly done. But the doing of it is a 
privilege which a self-reliant people would be loath 
to resign. 

Each man wishes to have his share in the dis- 
cussion. The habit of argument is universal. The 
confidence in the ultimate judgment of the com- 

64 



I 



SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

munity is general. The assurance of ability to lead 
is frequent. And through the local office, the 
small task, the way lies open to larger duties and 
positions in the State and the nation. 

It is not true that every native-born newsboy in 
America thinks that he can become President. But 
he knows that he 7nay if he can; and perhaps it is 
this knowledge, or perhaps it is something in his 
blood, that often encourages him to try how far he 
can go on the way. I suppose it is true that there 
are more ambitious boys in America than in any 
other country of the world. 

At the same time this spirit of self-reliance works 
in another and different direction. Within the 
seemingly complicated politics of nation, State, 
and town, each typical American is a person who 
likes to take care of himself, to have his own way, 
to manage his own affairs. He is not inclined to 
rely upon the State for aid and comfort. He wants 
not as much government as possible, but as little. 
He dislikes interference. Sometimes he resents con- 
trol. He is an individual, a person, and he feels 
very strongly that personal freedom is what he 
most needs, and that he is able to make good use 
of a large amount of it. 

Now it is evident that such a spirit as this has its 
weakness as well as its strength. It leads easily to 
r 6s 



TIIK SriRl r OV AM KKUW 

ovcM'i-ontuloiu'o. to ignoiani soil nssuraiur. {o rash- 
noss in uucKMiakint; tasks, aiul to careless haste in 
[HMt'orniinj; ihoni. 

It is good to ho a person, but not gixnl that 
ONiTv jHMson should think hinisell" a persi>na«;e. li 
is gooil to be ready tor any ilutw but not ginnl 
to undertake an\- duty without niakiui; ready tor it. 

There are many Anrerieans who ha\e too little 
respeet for speeial training, and too mueh eonl'ulenee 
in their power to sohe the problems of philosophy 
and statesmanship extemporaneously. 

No iloubt there is a popular tendeney to tiis- 
regard exceptional powers and attainments, and to 
think that one man is as good as another. No 
doubt \ou ean tind in America some cases of self- 
reliance so hypcrtrophicil that it amounts to im- 
pudei\ce towards the laws of the unixerse. This 
is socially disagreeable, politically dangerous, and 
morally regrettable. 

\'et we must not forget the inher side. The spirit 
of self reliance is not lo be judged by its failures, 
but b\ its successes. 

It has enabled .\merica to assert an inde["'en- 
dence which the rest of the world, except France, 
thought impossible; to frame a go\ernment whicli 
the rest of the world, including France, thought im- 
practicable: and to survive civil storms and perils 
which all the world thought fatal. It has animated 

66 



SrCLF-RKLIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 

the American people with a large and cheerful 
optimism which takes for granted tiiat great things 
are worth doing, and tries to do them. It has 
made it easier to redeem a continent from the 
ancient wilderness and to build on new ground a 
civilized state sufTicient to itself. 

"■J'he spirit of self-reliance has fallen into mis- 
takes, but it has shunned flelays, evasions, and 
dcsi)airs. It has begotten explorers, pioneers, in- 
ventors. It has trained masters of industry in the 
school of action. It has saved the poor man from 
the fetters of his poverty, and delivered the lowly 
man from the prison of his obscurity. 

Perhaps it has spoiled the worst material; but it 
has made the most of the average material; and 
it has bettered the best material. It has developed 
in such leaders as Franklin, Washington, JcfTerson, 
Lincoln, Lee, Grant, and Cleveland a very nolde 
and excellent manhood, calm, steady, equal to all 
emergencies. 

Somehow it has brought out of the turmoil of 
events and conflicts the soul of an adult people, 
ready to trust itself and to advance into the new 
day without misgiving. 



67 



J 



Ill 

FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 



Ill 

FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

It is no mistake to think of America as a demo- 
cratic country. But if you wish to understand the 
nature and quality of the democracy which pre- 
vails there, — its specific marks, its peculiarities, 
and perhaps its inconsistencies, — you must trace 
it to its source in the spirit of fair play. Therefore 
it will be profitable to study this spirit a little more 
carefully, to define it a little more clearly, and to 
consider some illustrations of its working in Ameri- 
can institutions, society, and character. 

The spirit of fair play, in its deepest origin, is a 
kind of religion. It is true that religious organiza- 
tions have not always shown it so that it could be 
identified by people outside. But this has been 
the fault of the organizations. At bottom, fair play 
is a man's recognition of the fact that he is not 
alone in the universe, that the world was not made 
for his private benefit, that the law of being is a 
benevolent justice which must regard and rule him 
as well as his fellow-men with sincere impartiality, 
and that any human system or order which inter- 

71 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

feres with this impartiality is contrary to the will of 
the Supreme Wisdom and Love. Is not this a kind 
of religion, and a very good kind? Do we not in- 
stinctively recognize a Divine authority in its voice 
when it says: "Whatsoever ye would that men 
should do unto you, do ye even so unto them"? 

But in its practical operation in everyday affairs 
this spirit is not always conscious of its deep origin. 
It is not usually expressed in terms of religion, any 
more than an ordinary weighing-machine is in- 
scribed with the formula of gravitation. It appears 
simply as the wish to conduct trade with just weights 
and measures, to live in a State which affords equal 
protection and opportunity to all its citizens, to play 
a game in which the rules are the same for every 
player, and a good stroke counts, no matter who 
makes it. 

The Anglo-Saxon race has fallen into the habit 
of claiming this spirit of fair play as its own peculiar 
property. The claim does not illustrate the quality 
which it asserts. Certainly no one can defend the 
proposition that the growth of this spirit in America 
was due exclusively, or even chiefly, to English in- 
fluence. It was in New England and in Virginia 
that ecclesiastical intolerance and social exclusive- 
ness were most developed. In the middle colonies 
like New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, where 
the proportion of colonists from Holland, France, 

72 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

and Germany was much larger, a more liberal and 
tolerant spirit prevailed. 

But, after all, it must be acknowledged that in 
the beginning there was no part of America where 
the spirit of self-reliance really carried with it that 
necessary complement, — the spirit of fair play. 
This was a thing of much slower growth. Indeed, 
it was not until the American people, passionately 
desiring self-rule, were brought into straits where 
they needed the help of every man to fight for in- 
dependence, that they began to feel the right of 
every man to share equally in the benefits and privi- 
leges of that self-rule. 

I pass by the discussion of the reasons why this 
second trait in the soul of the people developed later 
than the first. I pass by the tempting opportunity 
to describe the absurd pretensions of colonial aris- 
tocracy. I pass by the familiar theme of the in- 
flexible prejudices of Puritan theocracy, which led 
men to interpret liberty of conscience as the right 
to practise their own form of worship and to perse- 
cute all others. I pass by the picturesque and neg- 
lected spectacle of the violence of the mobs which 
shouted for liberty — a violence which reminds one 
of the saying of Rivarol that "the crowd never be- 
lieves that it has liberty until it attacks the liberties 
of others." All this I pass by for want of time, 
and come at once to the classic utterance of the 

73 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

spirit of fair play in America — I mean the Decla- 
ration of Independence. 

If I must apologize for discussing a document so 
familiar, it is because familiarity, not being illumi- 
nated by intelligence, has bred in these latter days 
a certain kind of contempt. A false interpretation 
has led the enthusiastic admirers of the Declaration 
of Independence to complain that it has been 
abandoned, and its scornful despisers to say that it 
ought to be abandoned. The Declaration, in fact, 
has been as variously and as absurdly explained as 
the writings of St. Paul, of whom a French critic 
said that "the only man of the second century who 
understood St. Paul was Marcion, and he mwunder- 
stood him." 

Take the famous sentence from the beginning of 
that document. "We hold these truths to be self- 
evident; that all men are created equal; that they 
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalien- 
able rights; that among these are life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness ; that to secure these rights, 
governments are instituted among men, deriving 
their just powers from the consent of the governed; 
that whenever any form of government becomes de- 
structive of these ends, it is the right of the people 
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new form 
of government, laying its foundations on such prin- 
ciples and organizing its power in such form as to 

74 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and 
happiness." 

Now what have we here? A defence of revolu- 
tion, no doubt, but not a sweeping and unqualified 
defence. It is carefully guarded and limited by the 
condition that revolution is justified only when gov- 
ernment becomes destructive of its own ends, — 
the security and the happiness of the people. 

And what have we here in the way of political 
doctrine? An assertion of the common rights of 
man as derived from his Creator, no doubt, and an 
implication that the specific prerogatives of rulers 
are not of divine origin. But there is no denial that 
the institution of government among men has a 
divine sanction. On the contrary, such a sanction 
is distinctly implied in the statement that govern- 
ment is necessary for the security of rights divinely 
given. There is no assertion of the divinity or even 
the superiority of any particular form of govern- 
ment, republican or democratic. On the contrary, 
"just powers" are recognized as derivable from the 
consent of the people. According to this view, a 
happy and consenting people under George III or 
Louis XVI would be as rightly and lawfully governed 
as a happy people under a congress and a president. 

And what have we here in the way of social 
theory? An assertion of equaHty, no doubt, and 
a very flat-footed and peremptory assertion. ''All 

75 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

men are created equal." But equal in what? In 
strength, in ability, in influence, in possessions. Not 
a word of it. The assertion of such a thing in 
an assembly which contained men as different as 
George Washington, with his lofty stature and rich 
estate, and Samuel Adams, for whose unimpressive 
person his friends were sometimes obliged to supply 
lodging and raiment, would have been a palpable 
absurdity. 

"But," says Professor Wendell, "the Declaration 
only asserts that men are created equal, not that 
they must remain so." Not at all. It implies 
that what equality exists by creation ought to 
remain by protection. It is, and ought to be, 
inalienable. 

But what is that equality? Not of person; 
for that would be to say that all men are alike, 
which is evidently false. Not of property; for 
that would be to say that all men are on a level, 
which never has been true, and, whether it is de- 
sirable or not, probably never will be true. The 
equality which is asserted among men refers simply 
to the rights which are common to men : life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness. Here government 
must make no distinctions, no exceptions. Here 
the social order must impose no arbitrary and un- 
equal deprivations and barriers. The life of all is 
equally sacred, the Hberty of all must be equally 

76 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

secure, in order that the right of all to pursue happi- 
ness may be equally open. 

Equality of opportunity : that is the proposition of 
the Declaration of Independence. And when you 
come to look at it closely, it does not seem at all 
unreasonable. For it proposes no alteration in the 
laws of the universe, — only a principle to be ob- 
served in human legislation. It predicts no Utopia 
of universal prosperity, — only a common adven- 
ture of equal risks and hopes. It has not the accent 
of that phrase, "Liberty, equality, fraternity, or 
death," which Chamfort translated so neatly, "Be 
my brother or I will kill you." It proceeds rather 
upon the assumption that fraternity already exists. 
It says, "We are brothers; therefore let us deal 
squarely with one another." It is, in fact, nothing 
more and nothing less than the voice of the spirit 
of fair play speaking gravely of the deepest interests 
of man. Here, in this game of life, it says, as we 
play it in America, the rules shall be the same for 
all. The penalties shall be the same for all. The 
prizes, so far as we can make it so, shall be open to 
all. And let the best man win. 

This, so far as I can see it, or feel it, or com- 
prehend it, is the sum total of democracy in America. 

It is not an abstract theory of universal suffrage 
and the infallibility of the majority. For, as a 
matter of fact, universal suffrage never has existed 

77 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

in the United States and does not exist to-day. 
Each State has the right to fix its own conditions of 
suffrage. It may require a property qualification; 
and in the past many States imposed this condition. 
It may require an educational qualification; and 
to-day some States are imposing this condition. It 
may exclude the Chinese; and California, Oregon, 
and Nevada make this exclusion. It may admit 
only natives and foreigners who have been natural- 
ized, as the majority of the States do. It may 
admit also foreigners who have merely declared 
their intention of becoming naturalized, as eleven 
of the States do. It may permit only men to vote, 
or it may expressly grant the suffrage to every citizen, 
male or female, as Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and 
Utah do. The only thing that the law of the nation 
says upon the subject is that when citizenship is 
established, the right to vote shall not be denied or 
abridged on account of race, colour, or previous 
condition of servitude. 

It is entirely possible, therefore, that within this 
condition, suffrage should expand or contract in the 
United States according to the will of the people. 
Woman suffrage might come in next year without 
the change of a word in the Constitution. All that 
would be necessary would be a change in the mind 
of the women, the majority of whom at present do 
not want to vote, and would not do it if you paid 

78 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

them. On the other hand, educational and property 
qualifications might be proposed which would re- 
duce the suffrage by a quarter or a third; but this, 
again, is not likely to happen. The point is that 
suffrage in America is not regarded as a universal 
and inalienable human right, but as a political 
privilege granted on the ground of fair play in order 
to make the rights of the people more secure. 

The undeniable tendency has been to widen the 
suffrage ; for Americans, as a rule, have a large con- 
fidence in the reasonableness of human nature, and 
believe that public opinion, properly and deliber- 
ately ascertained, will prove to be a wise and safe 
guide. But they recognize that a popular election 
may not always represent public opinion, that a 
people, like an individual, may and probably will 
need time to arrive at the best thought, the wisest 
counsel. 

President Grover Cleveland, a confirmed and 
inflexible Democrat, but not an obstreperous or 
flamboyant one, often said to me, "You can trust 
the best judgment of the rank and file, but you 
cannot always reach that best judgment in a hurry." 
James Russell Lowell said pretty much the same 
thing: "An appeal to the reason of the people has 
never been known to fail in the long run." The 
long mw, — that is the needful thing in the suc- 
cessful working of popular suffrage. And that the 

79 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

Americans have tried to gain by the division and 
distribution of powers, by the interposition of checks 
and delays, by lodging extraordinary privileges of 
veto in the hands of governors of States, and of the 
President of the United States. In short, by making 
swift action difficult and sudden action impossible, 
they have sought to secure fair play, even from 
the crowd, for every man and every interest. 

There are some of us who think that this might 
have been done more easily and more certainly if 
the bounds of suffrage had not been made so wide. 
We doubt, for example, whether a group of day- 
labourers coming from Italy with their padrone are 
really protected in their natural rights by having the 
privilege of a vote before they can understand the 
language of the land in which they cast it. So far 
from being a protection, it seems to us like a danger. 
It exposes them to the seductions of the demagogue 
and to the control of the boss. 

The suffrage of the ignorant is like a diamond 
hung round the neck of a little child who is sent out 
into the street : an invitation to robbers. It is like 
a stick of dynamite in the hands of a foolish boy: 
a prophecy of explosion. 

There are some of us who think that "coming 
of age" might be measured by intelligence as well 
as by years; that it would be easier to get at the 
mind of the people if the vote were cast by the 

80 



i 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

people who have minds; that a popular election 
would come nearer to representing public opinion if 
there were some way of sifting out at least a con- 
siderable part of those electors who can neither read 
nor write, nor understand the Constitution under 
which they are voting. 

But whatever may be the thoughts and wishes of 
the more conservative Americans upon this subject, 
two things are certain. One is that the privilege of 
voting is a thing which is easy to give away and 
very hard to take back. The other sure thing is 
that the Spirit of America will never consent to any 
restriction of the suffrage which rests upon artificial 
distinctions, or seems to create ranks and orders 
and estates within the body politic. If any condi- 
tions are imposed, they must be the same for all. 
If the privilege should be in any way narrowed, it 
must still be open alike to all who will make the 
necessary effort to attain it. This is fair play; and 
this, so far as the suffrage and popular sovereignty 
are concerned, is what American democracy means. 
Not that every man shall count alike in the affairs 
of state, but that every man shall have an equal 
chance to make himself count for what he is worth. 

Mark you, I do not say that this result has been 
fully accomplished in the United States. The ma- 
chinery of parties interferes with it. The presenta- 
tion of men and of measures from a purely partisan 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

point of view interferes with it. In any national 
election it is reasonably sure that either the Repub- 
lican party or the Democratic party will win. The 
policies and the candidates of both have been deter- 
mined in committee or caucus, by processes which 
the ordinary citizen does not understand and can- 
not touch. But what if he does not like the results 
on either side? What if neither party seems to 
him clear or consistent or satisfactory? Still he 
must go with one or the other, or else be content 
to assert his individuality and lose his electoral effi- 
ciency by going in with one of the three or four 
little parties which stand for moral protest, or intellec- 
tual whim, or political vagary, without any possible 
chance of carrying the election. 

A thoughtful man sometimes feels as if he were 
almost helpless amid the intricacies of the system by 
which his opinion on national affairs is asked. He 
sits with his vote in his hand as if it were some 
strange and antiquated instrument, and says to 
himself, "Now what, in heaven's name, am I going 
to do with this?" 

In the large cities, especially, this sense of impo- 
tence is likely to trouble the intelligent and con- 
scientious American. For here a species of man 
has developed called the Boss, who takes possession 
of the political machinery and uses it for his own 
purposes. He controls the party through a faction, 

82 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

and the faction through a gang, and the gang through 
a ring, and the ring by his own will, which is usually 
neither sweet nor savoury. He virtually owns the 
public franchises, the public offices, the public pay- 
roll. Like Rob Roy or Robin Hood, he takes 
tribute from the rich and distributes it to the poor, 
— for a consideration ; namely, their personal loyalty 
to him. He leads his followers to the polls as a 
feudal chief led his retainers to battle. And the 
men whom he has chosen, the policies which he 
approves, are the ones that win. 

What does this mean? The downfall of democ- 
racy ? No ; only the human weakness of the system 
in which democracy has sought to reach its ends; 
only the failure in duty, in many cases, of the very 
men who ought to have watched over the system in 
order to prevent its corruption. 

It is because good men in America too often neglect 
politics that bad men sometimes control them. And, 
after all, when the evil goes far enough, it secretes its 
own remedy, — popular discontent, a reform move- 
ment, a peaceful revolution. The way is open. 
Speech is free. There is no need of pikes and 
barricades and firebrands. There is a more power- 
ful weapon in every man's hand. Persuade him to 
use it for his own good. Combine the forces of 
intelligence and conscience, and the city which sees 
its own interest will find out how to secure it. 

83 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

But the trouble, with such a mass of voters, is 
to produce this awakening, to secure this combina- 
tion of better forces. It is a trouble which Ameri- 
cans often feel deeply, and of which they some- 
times complain bitterly. But after all, if you can 
get down to the bottom of their minds, you will 
find that they would rather take their trouble in 
this form than in any other. They feel that there 
is something wholesome and bracing in the idea 
that people must want good government before they 
can get it. And for the sake of this they are will- 
ing, upon the whole, and except during intervals, 
to give that eternal vigilance which is the price of 
fair play. 

It is not, however, of democracy as it has taken 
shape in poHtical forms that I would speak; but 
rather of democracy as a spirit, a sentiment exist- 
ing in the soul of the American people. The root 
of it is the feeling that the openings of life, so 
far as they are under human control, ought to be 
equal for all. The world may be like a house of 
many stories, some higher, some lower. But there 
shall be no locked doors between those stories. 
Every stairway shall be unbarred. Every man shall 
have his chance to rise. Every man shall be free 
to pursue his happiness, and protected in the enjoy- 
ment of his liberty, and secure in the possession of 

84 



i 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

his life, so far as he does not interfere with others in 
the same rights. 

This does not mean that all shall be treated alike, 
shall receive the same rewards. For, as Plato says, 
"The essence of equality lies in treating unequal 
things unequally." But it means what the first 
Napoleon called la carrihre ouverte aux talents. 
Nay, it means a little more than that. For it goes 
beyond the talents, to the mediocrities, to the in- 
efficiencies, and takes them into its just and humane 
and unprejudiced account. It means what Presi- 
dent Roosevelt meant when he spoke of '^the square 
deal for everybody.''^ The soul of the American 
people answered to his words because he had ex- 
pressed one of their dominant ideals. 

You must not imagine that I propose to claim 
that this ideal has been perfectly realized in America. 
It is not true that every man gets justice there. It is 
not true that none are oppressed or unfairly treated. 
It is not true that every one finds the particular 
stairway which he wishes to climb open and unen- 
cumbered. But where is any ideal perfectly realized 
except in heaven and in the writings of female nov- 
eHsts ? It is of the real desire and purpose, the good 
intention, the aim and temper of the American peo- 
ple, that I speak. And here I say, without doubt, 
the spirit of fair play has been, and still is, one 
of the creative and controlling factors of America. 

85 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

If you should ask me for the best evidence to 
support this statement, I should at once name the 
Constitution and the Supreme Court of the United 
States. Here is an original institution, created and 
estabHshed by the people at the very birth of the 
nation, pecuHar in its character and functions, I 
believe, to America, and embodying in visible form 
the spirit of fair play. 

The laws under which a man must live in America 
are of three kinds. There is first the common law, 
which prevails in all the States except Louisiana, 
which is still under the Napoleonic Code. The 
common law, inherited from England, is contained 
in the mass of decisions and precedents handed 
down by the duly established courts from generation 
to generation. It is supposed to cover the principles 
which are likely to arise in almost all cases. But 
when a new principle appears, the judge must decide 
it according to his conscience and create the legal 
right. 

The second source of law is found in statutes 
of the United States enacted by Congress, in the 
constitutions of the different States, and in the 
statutes enacted by the State legislatures. Here we 
have definite rules and regulations, not arising out 
of differences or disputes between individuals, but 
framed on general principles, and intended to cover 
all cases that may arise under them. 

86 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

The third source of law is the Constitution of the 
United States, which is supreme and sovereign over 
all other laws. It is the enactment of the whole peo- 
ple. Congress did not create it. It created Congress. 
No legislation, whether of a State or of the nation, 
can impair or contravene its authority. It can only 
be changed by the same power which made it, — 
the people of the United States, expressing their 
will, first through a two-thirds majority of the na- 
tional House and Senate, and then directly through 
the vote of three-fourths of the forty-six States. 

Any statute which conflicts with the Constitution 
is invalid. Any State constitution which fails to 
conform to it is, in so far forth, non-existent. Any 
judicial decision which contradicts it is of no binding 
force. Over all the complexities of legislation and 
the perplexities of politics in America stands this law 
above the laws, this ultimate guarantee of fair play. 

The thing to be noted in the Constitution is 
this: brief as it is for the creative document of a 
great nation, it contains an ample Bill of Rights, 
protecting every man alike. The Constitution, as 
originally framed in 1787, had omitted to do this 
fully, though it prohibited the States from passing 
any law to impair the validity of contracts, from 
suspending the writ of habeas corpus in time of 
peace, and from other things contrary to the spirit 
of fair play. But it was evident at once that the 

87 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

Constitution would not be ratiiicd by a sufficient 
number of the States unless it went much farther. 
Massachusetts voiced the Spirit of America in pre- 
senting a series of amendments covering the ground 
of equal dealing with all men in the matters most 
essential to individual freedom and securit)'. In 
1790 these amendments, numbered from I to X, 
were passed by Congress, and in 17Q1 they became 
part of the Constitution, 

What do they do? They guarantee religious 
liberty, freedom of speech and of the press, and the 
right of popular assembly and petition. They pro- 
tect every man, in time of peace, from criminal in- 
dictment except by a grand jury, from secret trial, 
from compulsion to testify against himself, from 
being tried again for an offence of which he has 
been once acquitted, and from the requisition of 
excessive bail and the infliction of cruel or unusual 
punishments. They guarantee to him the right to 
be tried by an impartial jury of his peers and neigh- 
bours in criminal cases and in all suits under com- 
mon law when the amount in controversy exceeds 
twenty dollars in value. They protect his house 
from search except under legal and specific warrant, 
and his property from appropriation for public use 
without just compensation. They assure him that 
he shall not be deprived of life, liberty, or property 
without due process of law. 

88 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

The remarkable thing about these provisions for 
fair play is not so much their nature as the place 
where they are put. In England there is a Bill of 
Rights, embodied in various enactments, which 
covers pretty much the same ground. But these, 
as Mr. James Bryce says, "are merely ordinary 
laws, which could be repealed by Parliament at any 
moment in exactly the same way as it can repeal a 
highway act or lower the duty on tobacco." But 
in America they are placed upon a secure and lofty 
foundation, they are lifted above the passing storms 
of party pjolitics. No State can touch them. No 
act of Congress can touch them. They belong to 
the law above laws. 

Nor is this all. A supreme tribunal, coordinate 
with the national executive and legislature, inde- 
pendent and final in its action, is created by the 
Constitution itself to interpret and apply this su- 
preme law. The nine judges who compose this 
court are chosen from the highest ranks of the legal 
profession, appointed by the President, and con- 
firmed by the Senate. They hold office for life. 
Their court room is in the centre of the national 
Capitol, between the wings appropriated to the 
Senate and the House. 

It is to that quiet chamber, so rich, so noble in 
its dignity and simplicity, so free from pomp and 
ostentation, so remote from turmoil and confusion, 

89 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

so filled with the tranquil glory of intelligence and 
conscience, so eloquent of confidence in the power 
of justice to vindicate itself, — it is to that room 
that I would take a foreigner who asked me why 
I believe that democracy in America has the 
promise of endurance. Those nine men, in their 
black judicial robes (the only officials of the nation 
who have from the beginning worn a uniform of 
office), are the symbols of the American conscience 
offering the ultimate guarantee of fair play. To 
them every case in law and equity arising under 
the Constitution, treaties and laws of the United 
States, every case of admiralty and marine juris- 
diction, every case between citizens of different 
States, or between two States, every case in which 
the United States itself is a party, may be brought 
for final decision. For more than a hundred years 
this court has discharged its high functions without 
a suspicion of corruption or a shadow of reproach. 

Twenty-one times it has annulled the action of 
Congress and declared it ultra vires. More than 
two hundred times it has found that State statutes 
were contrary to the Constitution and therefore 
practically non-existent. And these decisions are 
not made in the abstract, on theory, but in the con- 
crete, on actual cases when the principle of fair 
play under the Constitution is at stake. 

Let me illustrate this. In 1894 a law was passed 
90 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

by Congress taxing all incomes over a certain sum 
at certain rates. This was, in effect, not a tax based 
proportionally upon population, but a special tax 
upon a part of the population. It was also a direct 
tax levied by the national legislature. There was 
no necessity of discussing the abstract question of 
the wisdom or righteousness of such taxation. The 
only question was whether it was fair play under 
the Constitution. A citizen of New York refused to 
pay the tax; the case was brought to the Supreme 
Court and argued by Mr. Choate, the late Ameri- 
can Ambassador to Great Britain. The court held 
that Congress had no power to impose such a tax, 
because the Constitution forbids that body to lay 
any direct tax, "unless in proportion to the census." 
By this one decision the income-tax law became 
null, as if it had never been. 

Again, a certain citizen had obtained from the 
State of Georgia a grant of land upon certain terms. 
This grant was subsequently repealed by the State 
by a general statute. A case arose out of the con- 
veyance of this land by a deed and covenant, and 
was carried to the Supreme Court. The court held 
that the statute of the State which took the citizen's 
land away from him was null, because it " impaired 
the obligation of a contract," which the Constitution 
expressly forbids. 

Again, in 1890, Congress passed a measure com- 

91 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

monly called the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, declar- 
ing ''every contract, combination in the form of 
trusts or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of 
trade or commerce among the several States" to be 
illegal. This was undoubtedly intended to prevent 
the merger of railroads and manufacturing concerns 
into gigantic trusts with monopolistic powers. The 
American spirit has always understood liberty as 
including the right of the citizen to be free in the 
enjoyment of all his faculties, to live and work where 
he will, and in so doing to move freely from State 
to State. So far as the trusts were combinations in 
restraint of this right, the statute properly declared 
them illegal, and the Supreme Court so interpreted 
and applied it. But it soon became evident that 
combinations of labour might restrain trade just as 
much as combinations of capital. A strike or a 
boycott might paralyze an industry or stop a rail- 
road. The Supreme Court did not hesitate to 
apply the same rule to the employees as to the em- 
ployers. It held that a combination whose pro- 
fessed object is to arrest the operation of railroads 
whose lines extend from a great city into adjoining 
States until such roads accede to certain demands 
made upon them, whether such demands are in 
themselves reasonable or unreasonable, just or un- 
just, is certainly an unlawful conspiracy in restraint 
of commerce among the States. 

92 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

Again and again the Supreme Court has inter- 
fered to prevent citizens of all the States from being 
deprived by the action of any State of those liber- 
ties which belong to them in common. Again and 
again its decisions have expressed and illustrated 
the fundamental American conviction which is 
summed up in the words of Chief Justice Bradley: 
" The right to follow any of the common occupations 
of life is an inalienable right." 

I have not spoken of the other federal courts and 
of the general machinery of justice in the United 
States, because there is not time to do so. If it were 
possible to characterize the general tendency in a 
sentence, I would say that it lays the primary em- 
phasis on the protection of rights, and the secondary 
emphasis on the punishment of offences. Looking 
at the processes of justice from the outside, and 
describing things by their appearance, one might 
say that in many parts of the continent of Europe 
an accused man looks guilty till he is proved inno- 
cent ; in America he looks innocent until his guilt is 
established. 

The American tendency has its serious draw- 
backs, — legal delays, failures to convict, immunity 
of criminals, and so on. These are unpleasant and 
dangerous things. Yet, after all, when the thought- 
ful American looks at his country quietly and 
soberly he feels that a fundamental sense of justice 

93 



V. 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

prevails there not only in the courts but among the 
people. The exceptions are glaring, but they are 
still exceptions. And when he remembers the im- 
mense and inevitable perils of a republic, he re- 
assures himself by considering the past history and 
the present power of the Supreme Court, that 
great bulwark against official encroachment, legisla- 
tive tyranny, and mobocracy, — that grave and 
majestic symbol of the spirit of fair play. A re- 
public with such an institution at the centre of its 
national conscience has at least one instrument of 
protection against the dangers which lurk in the 
periphery of its own passions. 

If you should ask me for a second illustration of 
the spirit of fair play in America, I should name 
religious liberty and the peaceful independence of 
the churches within the state. I do not call it the 
"Separation of Church and State," because I fear 
that in France the phrase might carry a false mean- 
ing. It might convey the impression of a forcible 
rupture, or even a feeling of hostility, between the 
government and the religious bodies. Nothing of 
that kind exists in America. The state extends a 
firm and friendly protection to the adherents of all 
forms of religious belief or unbelief, defending all 
alike in their persons, in the possession of their 
property, and in their chosen method of pursuing 

94 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

happiness, whether in this world or in the next. It 
requires only that they shall not practise as a part 
of their cult anything contrary to public morality, 
such as polygamy, or physical cruelty, or neglect 
of children. Otherwise they are all free to follow 
the dictates of conscience in worshipping or in not 
worshipping, and in so doing they are under the 
shield of government. 

This is guaranteed not only by the Constitution 
of the United States, but also by the separate State 
constitutions, so far as I know, without exception. 
Moreover, the general confidence and good-will of 
the state towards the churches is shown in many 
ways. Property used for religious purposes is ex- 
empted from taxation, — doubtless on the ground 
that these purposes are likely to promote good 
citizenship and orderly living. Religious marriage 
is recognized, but not required; and the act of a 
minister of any creed is, in this particular, as valid 
and binding as if he were a magistrate. But such 
marriages must be witnessed and registered accord- 
ing to law, and no church can annul them. It is 
the common practice to open sessions of the legisla- 
ture, national and State, with an act of prayer; but 
participation in this act is voluntary. The Presi- 
dent, according to ancient custom, appoints an 
annual day of national thanksgiving in the month 
of November, and his proclamation to this effect is 

95 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

repeated by the governors of the different States. 
But here, again, it is a proclamation of liberty. The 
people are simply recommended to assemble in their 
various places of worship, and to give thanks ac- 
cording to their conscience and faith. 

The laws against blasphemy and against the dis- 
turbance of public worship which exist in most of 
the States offer an equal protection to a Jewish 
synagogue, a Catholic cathedral, a Buddhist temple, 
a Protestant church, and a Quaker meeting-house; 
and no citizen is under any compulsion to enter any 
one of these buildings, or to pay a penny of taxation 
for their support. Each religious organization regu- 
lates its own affairs and controls its own property. 
In cases of dispute arising within a church the civil 
law has decided, again and again, that the rule and 
constitution of the church itself shall prevail. 

But what of the religious bodies which exist under 
this system? Do not imagine that they are small, 
feeble, or insignificant; that they are content to be 
merely tolerated; that they feel themselves in any 
way impotent or slighted. They include the large 
majority of the American people. Twelve millions 
are adherents of the Catholic Church. The ad- 
herents of the Protestant churches are estimated to 
number between forty and fifty millions. But neither 
as a whole, nor in any of their separate organizations, 
do the religious people of America feel that they are 

96 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

deprived of any real rights or robbed of any just 
powers. 

It is true that the different churches are some- 
times very jealous of one another. But bad as that 
may be for them, from a political point of view it is 
rather a safeguard. 

It is true that ecclesiastics sometimes have 
dreams, and perhaps schemes, which look towards 
the obtaining of special privileges or powers for 
their own organization. But that is because eccle- 
siastics are human and fallible. In the main, you 
may say with confidence that there is no party or 
sect in America that has the slightest wish to see 
church and state united, or even entangled. The 
American people are content and happy that reli- 
gion should be free and independent. And this 
contentment arises from three causes. 

First, rehgious hberty has come naturally, peace- 
fully, in a moderate and friendly temper, with con- 
sideration for the conscience and the rights of all, 
and at the same time, if I mistake not, with a gen- 
eral recognition that the essence of religion, personal 
faith in a spiritual life and a Divine law, is a 
purifying, strengthening, elevating factor in human 
society. 

Second, the churches have prospered in freedom; 
they are well-to-do, they are active, they are able to 
erect fine edifices, to support their clergy, to carry 
H 97 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

on benevolent and missionary enterprises on an im- 
mense scale, costing many millions of dollars every 
year. The voluntary system has its great disad- 
vantages and drawbacks, — its perils, even. But 
upon the whole, religious people in America, Catho- 
lics, Protestants, and Jews alike, feel that these are 
more than counterbalanced by the devotion which 
is begotten and nourished by the very act of making 
gifts and sacrifices, and by the sober strength which 
comes into a man's faith when he is called to sup- 
port it by his works. 

Men value what they pay for. But this is true 
only when they pay for what they really want. 

Third, and chiefly, religious liberty commends 
itself to the Americans because they feel that it is 
the very highest kind of fair play. That a man 
should have freedom in the affairs of his soul is 
certainly most vital to his pursuit of happiness. The 
noble example of tolerance which was set to the 
American colonies by the Quakers of Pennsylvania, 
the Baptists of Rhode Island, and the Catholics of 
Maryland, prevailed slowly but surely over the 
opposite example of the Puritans of Massachusetts 
and the Anglicans of Virginia. The saying of 
William of Orange, "Conscience is God's province," 
has become one of the watchwords of America. 

In a country which, as a matter of fact, is pre- 
dominantly Christian and Protestant, there is neither 

98 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

establishment nor proscription of any form of faith. 
In the President's cabinet (1908) I personally know 
a Jew, a Catholic, a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, 
and a Methodist. The President himself is a mem- 
ber of one of the smallest denominations in the 
country, the Dutch Reformed. 

Nor is unfaith penalized or persecuted. A re- 
cent writer on America has said that "an avowed 
atheist is not received in any social circles above 
that of the ordinary saloon." Well, an atheist 
avowed in definite and unmistakable terms, a man 
who positively affirms that there is no God, is a very 
difficult person to find in this world of mystery. 
But a positivist, a free-thinker, a Voltairean, a scep- 
tic, an agnostic, an antisupernaturalist of any kind, 
has the same rights and privileges as any other man. 
In America, if his life is clean and his manners decent, 
he goes everywhere. You may meet him in the best 
clubs, and in social circles which are at the farthest 
remove from the saloon. This is not because people 
like his opinions, but because they feel he is entitled 
to form them for himself. They take it for granted 
that it is as impossible to correct unbelief by earthly 
penalties as it is to deprive faith of its heavenly 
rewards. 

I do not say that this is the right attitude, the 
only reasonable attitude. I do not wish to persuade 
any one to adopt it. I say only that it is the char- 

99 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

acteristic attitude of the Americans, and that sin- 
cerely religious people hold it, in the Catholic Church 
and in the Protestant Church. It may be that the 
spirit of fair play has blinded them. It may be that 
it has enlightened them. Be that as it may, they 
have passed beyond the point of demanding free- 
dom of conscience for themselves to that of conced- 
ing it to others. And in this they think that they 
are acting in accordance with the Divine will and 
example. 

An anecdote will illustrate this attitude better 
than many paragraphs of explanation. In the older 
American colleges, which were independent of state 
control, the original course of study was uniform 
and prescribed, and chapel services were held which 
the students were required to attend. Elective 
studies came in. The oldest of the universities 
made attendance at chapel voluntary. "I under- 
stand," said a critic to the president of the univer- 
sity, "that you have made God an elective in your 
college." The President thought for a moment. 
*'No," said he, "we understand that He has made 
Himself elective everywhere." 

There are certain singular limitations in the 
spirit of fair play in America of which I must say a 
word in order to play fair. Chief among these is 
the way in which the people of the colonies and of 

lOO 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

the United States dealt for many years with the 
races which have not a white skin. 

The American Indians, in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries, undoubtedly sinned as much 
as they were sinned against. They were treacher- 
ous, implacable, unspeakably cruel, horribly blood- 
thirsty. It is no wonder that the colonists regarded 
them as devils. It is no wonder that the feeling of 
mistrust and resentment persisted from one genera- 
tion to another. But the strange thing is that when 
the Indians were subjugated and for the most part 
pacified, America still treated them from a hostile 
and alien point of view, denied them the rights of 
citizenship, took their property from them, and 
made it very difficult for them to pursue happiness 
in any reasonable form. For many years this treat- 
ment continued. It was so glaring that a book 
was written which described the Indian policy of 
the United States, not altogether unjustly, as A 
Century of Dishonor. To-day all this is changed. 
The scattered and diminished remnants of the red 
men are admitted to citizenship if they wish it, and 
protected in their rights, and private benevolence 
vies with government in seeking to better their 
condition. 

The African race, introduced into America for 
industrial reasons, multiplied more rapidly there 
than in its native home, and soon became a large 

lOI 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

factor in the population. But it was regarded and 
treated from a point of view totally different from 
that which controlled the treatment of the white 
factors. It did not share in the rights enumerated 
in the Declaration of Independence. It was an 
object of commerce, a source of wealth, a necessity 
of agriculture. The system of domestic slavery 
held practically all of the negroes in bondage (in 
spite of the fact that the Northern States abandoned 
it, and many of the best men in the South disliked it 
and protested against it) until the third quarter of 
the nineteenth century. It was approved, or at 
least tolerated, by the majority of the people until 
the Civil War did away with it. It has left as a 
legacy of retribution the most difificult and danger- 
ous problem of America, — perhaps the greatest and 
most perplexing problem that any nation has ever 
had to face. 

Nine millions of negroes, largely ignorant and 
naturally ill-fitted for self-government, are domiciled 
in the midst of a white population which in some 
sections of the South they outnumber. How to rule, 
protect, and educate this body of coloured people; 
how to secure them in their civil rights without ad- 
mitting them to a racial mixture — that is the 
problem. ' 

The Oriental races, recently coming to America 
in increasing numbers, receive from the people a 

1 02 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

welcome which cannot be described as cordial. 
The exclusion of the Chinese from citizenship, and 
in some States from immigration, is but a small 
symptom of the general situation. If any consider- 
able number of Burmese or East Indians or Japanese 
should come, the situation would be the same, and 
it would be intensified with the increase of the num- 
bers. They would not find the Americans inclined 
to make an open career for the Oriental talents. 

Understand, I am not now condemning this state 
of affairs, nor am I defending it. That is not my 
business. I am simply trying to describe it. How 
is it to be reconciled with the spirit of fair play? I 
do not know. Perhaps reconciliation is impossible. 
But a partial understanding of the facts is possible, 
if you take into account the doctrine of inferior races. 

This doctrine is not held or defended by all Ameri- 
cans. Some on religious grounds, some on philo- 
sophic grounds, would deny it. But on the mass 
of the people it has a firm, though in part an un- 
recognized, hold. They believe — or perhaps feel 
would be a better word — that the white race has 
an innate superiority to the coloured races. From 
this doctrine they have proceeded to draw conclu- 
sions, and curiously enough they have put them in 
the form of fair play. The Indians were not to be 
admitted to citizenship because they were the wards 
of the nation. The negroes were better off under 
103 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

slavery because they were like children, needing 
control and protection. They must still be kept in 
social dependence and tutelage because they will be 
safer and happier so. The Orientals are not fit 
for a share in American citizenship, and they shall 
not be let in because they will simply give us another 
inferior race to be taken care of. 

I do not propose to discuss the philosophical 
consistency of such arguments. It is difficult to 
imagine what place Rousseau would have found for 
them in his doctrine of the state of nature and the 
rights of man. 

The truth is that the Spirit of America has never 
been profoundly impressed with the idea of philo- 
sophical consistency. The Republic finds herself 
face to face not with a theory but with a condition. 
It is the immense mass of the African population 
that creates the difficulty for America. She means 
to give equal civil rights to her nine million negroes. 
She does not mean to let the black blood mix with 
the white. Whatever social division may be neces- 
sary to prevent this immense and formidable adult- 
eration must be maintained intact. 

Here, it seems to me, is the supreme test which 
the Spirit of America has to meet. In a certain 
sense the problem appears insoluble because it in- 
volves an insoluble race. But precisely here, in the 
necessity of keeping the negro race distinct, and in 

104 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

the duty of giving it full opportunity for self-develop- 
ment, fair play may find the occasion for a most 
notable and noble triumph. 

I have left but a moment in which to speak of 
the influence of the kind of democracy which exists 
in America upon social conditions. In a word: it 
has produced a society of natural divisions without 
closed partitions, a temper of independence which 
shows itself either as self-assertion or self-respect 
according to the quality of the man, and an atmos- 
phere of large opportunity which promotes general 
good humour. 

In America, as elsewhere, people who have tastes 
and capacities in common consort together. An 
uneducated man will not find himself at ease in the 
habitual society of learned men who talk principally 
about books. A poor man will not feel comfortable 
if he attempts to keep company with those whose 
wealth has led them to immerse themselves in costly 
amusements. This makes classes, if you like, ranks, 
if you choose to call them so. 

Moreover you will find that certain occupations 
and achievements which men have generally re- 
garded with respect confer a kind of social distinction 
in America. Men who have become eminent in the 
learned professions, or in the army or navy, or in 
the higher sort of politics; men who have won suc- 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

cess in literature or the other fine arts; men who 
have done notable things of various kinds, — such 
persons are likely to know each other better and to 
be better known to the world than if they had done 
nothing. Furthermore there are families in which 
this kind of thing has gone on from generation to 
generation; and others in which inherited wealth, 
moderate or great, has opened the way to culture 
and refinement; and others in which newly acquired 
wealth has been used with generosity and dignity; 
and others in which the mere mass of money has 
created a noteworthy establishment. These various 
people, divided among themselves by their tastes, 
their opinions, and perhaps as much as anything 
else by their favourite recreations, find their way 
into the red book of Who's Who, into the blue book 
of the Social Register. Here, if you have an imagi- 
native turn of mind, you may discover (and 
denounce, or applaud, or ridicule) the beginnings 
of an aristocracy. 

But if you use that word, remember that it is an 
aristocracy without legal privilege or prerogative, 
without definite boundaries, and without any rule 
of primogeniture. Therefore it seems to exist in the 
midst of democracy without serious friction or hos- 
tility. The typical American does not feel injured 
by the fact that another man is richer, better known, 
more influential than himself, unless he believes 
106 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

that the eminence has been unfairly reached. He 
respects those who respect themselves and him. He 
is ready to meet the men who are above him with- 
out servility, and the men who are beneath him 
without patronage. 

True, he is sometimes a little hazy about the pre- 
cise definition of "above" and "beneath." His 
feeling that all the doors are open may lead him to 
act as if he had already passed through a good 
many of them. There is at times an "I-could-if-I- 
would" air about him which is rather disconcerting. 

There are great differences among Americans, of 
course, in regard to manners, ranging all the way 
from the most banal formality to the most exquisite 
informality. But in general you may say that man- 
ners are taken rather lightly, too lightly, perhaps, 
because they are not regarded as very real things. 
Their value as a means of discipline is often for- 
gotten. The average American will not blush very 
deeply over a social blunder; he will laugh at it as 
a mistake in a game. But to really hurt you, or to 
lower his own independence, would make him feel 
badly indeed. 

The free-and-easy atmosphere of the streets, the 
shops, the hotels, all public places, always strikes 
the foreigner, and sometimes very uncomfortably. 
The conductor on the railway car will not touch his 
hat to you; but, on the other hand, he does not 
107 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

expect a fee from you. The workman on the street 
of whom you ask a question will answer you as an 
equal, but he will tell you what you want to know. 
In the country the tone of familiarity is even more 
marked. If you board for the summer with a 
Yankee farmer, you can see that he not only thinks 
himself as good as you are, but that he cultivates a 
slightly artificial pity for you as "city folks." 

In American family life there is often an absence 
of restraint and deference, in school and college life 
a lack of discipline and subordination, which looks 
ugly, and probably is rather unwholesome. One 
sometimes regrets in America the want of those 
tokens of respect which are the outward and visible 
sign of an inward and spiritual grace. 

But, on the other hand, there is probably more 
good feeling, friendliness, plain human kindness, 
running around loose in America than anywhere 
else in the world. The sense of the essential equality 
of manhood takes away much of the sting of the 
inequalities of fortune. The knowledge of the open 
door reduces the offence of the stairway. It is 
pleasant and wholesome to live with men who have 
a feeling of the dignity and worth of their own 
occupations. 

Our letter-carrier at Princeton never made any 
difference in his treatment of my neighbour Presi- 
dent Cleveland and myself. He was equally kind 

1 08 



FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 

to both of us, and I may add equally cheerful in 
rendering little friendly services outside of his strict 
duty. My guides in the backwoods of Maine and 
the Adirondacks regard me as a comrade who curi- 
ously enough makes his living by writing books, but 
who also shows that he knows the real value of life 
by spending his vacation in the forest. As a matter 
of fact, they think much more of their own skill 
with the axe and paddle than of my supposed ability 
with the pen. They have not a touch of subser- 
vience in their manner or their talk. They do their 
work willingly. They carry their packs, and chop 
the wood, and spread the tents, and make the bed 
of green boughs. And then, at night, around the 
camp-fire, they smoke their pipes with me, and the 
question is, Who can tell the best story? 



109 



IV 
WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 



IV 

WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

The Spirit of America is best known in Europe by 
one of its qualities, — energy. This is supposed to be 
so vast, so abnormal, that it overwhelms and obliter- 
ates all other quahties, and acts almost as a bHnd 
force, driving the whole nation along the highroad 
of unremitting toil for the development of physical 
power and the accumulation of material wealth. 

La vie intense — which is the polite French 
translation of "the strenuous life" — is regarded 
as the unanimous choice of the Americans, who 
are never happy unless they are doing something, 
and never satisfied until they have made a great 
deal of money. The current view in Europe 
considers them as a well-meaning people en- 
slaved by their own restless activity, bound to the 
service of gigantic industries, and captive to the 
adoration of a golden idol. But curiously enough 
they are often supposed to be unconscious both of 
the slavery and of the idolatry; in weaving the 
shackles of industrious materialism they imagine 
themselves to be free and strong; in bowing down 
I 113 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

to the Almighty Dollar they ignorantly worship an 
unknown god. 

This European view of American energy, and its 
inexpHcable nature, and its terrible results, seems to 
have something of the fairy tale about it. It is Hke 
the story of a giant, dreadful, but not altogether 
convincing. It lacks discrimination. In one point, 
at least, it is palpably incorrect. And with that 
point I propose to begin a more careful, and per- 
haps a more sane, consideration of the whole subject. 

It is evidently not true that America is ignorant 
of the dangers that accompany her immense de- 
velopment of energy and its application in such 
large measure to material ends. Only the other 
day I was reading a book by an American about 
his country, which paints the picture in colours as 
fierce and forms as flat as the most modern of 
French decadent painters would use. 

The author says: "There stands America, en- 
gaged in this superb struggle to dominate Nature 
and put the elements into bondage to man. In- 
voluntarily all talents apply themselves to material 
production. No wonder that men of science no 
longer study Nature for Nature's sake; they must 
perforce put her powers into harness; no wonder 
that professors no longer teach knowledge for the 
sake of knowledge; they must make their students 
efficient factors in the industrial world; no wonder 

114 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

that clergymen no longer preach repentance for the 
sake of the kingdom of heaven; they must turn 
churches into prosperous corporations, multiplying 
communicants and distributing Christmas presents 
by the gross. Industrial civilization has decreed 
that statesmanship shall consist of schemes to make 
the nation richer, that presidents shall be elected 
with a view to the stock-market, that literature 
shall keep close to the life of the average man, and 
that art shall become national by means of a pro- 
tective tariff. . . . 

"The process of this civilization is simple: the 
industrial habit of thought moulds the opinion of 
the majority, which rolls along, abstract and imper- 
sonal, gathering bulk till its giant figure is selected 
as the national conscience. As in an ecclesiastical 
state of society decrees of a council become articles 
of private faith, and men die for homoousion or elec- 
tion, so in America the opinions of the majority, 
once pronounced, become primary rules of con- 
duct. . . . The central ethical doctrine of indus- 
trial thought is that material production is the chief 
duty of man." 

The author goes on to show that the acceptance 
of this doctrine has produced in America ''conven- 
tional sentimentality''^ in the emotional Hfe, ''spiritual 
feebleness" in the rehgious life, "formlessness" in 
"5 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

the social life, ^^ self-deception^^ in the political life, 
and a "slovenly" intelHgence in all matters outside 
of business. "We accept sentimentality," he says, 
"because we do not stop to consider whether our 
emotional life is worth an infusion of blood and 
vigour, rather than because we have deliberately 
decided that it is not. We neglect religion, because 
we cannot spare time to think what religion means, 
rather than because we judge it only worth a con- 
ventional lip service. We think poetry effeminate, 
because we do not read it, rather than because we 
believe its effect injurious. We have been swept 
off our feet by the brilliant success of our industrial 
civilization; and, blinded by vanity, we enumerate 
the list of our exports, we measure the swelling tide 
of our national prosperity ; but we do not stop even 
to repeat to ourselves the names of other things." 

This rather sweeping indictment against a whole 
civilization reminds me of the way in which one 
of my students once defined rhetoric. "Rhetoric," 
said this candid youth, "is the art of using words 
so as to make statements which are not entirely cor- 
rect look like truths which nobody can deny." 

The description of America given by her sad 
and angry friend resembles one of those relentless 
portraits which are made by rustic photographers. 
The unmitigated sunlight does its worst through an 
unadjusted lens ; and the result is a picture which 

ii6 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

is fearfully and wonderfully made. "It looks like 
her," you say, "it looks horribly like her. But 
thank God I never saw her look just Hke that." 

No one can deny that the life of America has 
developed more rapidly and more fully on the in- 
dustrial side than on any other. No one can deny 
that the larger part, if not the better part, of her 
energy and effort has gone into the physical con- 
quest of nature and the transformation of natural 
resources into material wealth. No one can deny 
that this undue absorption in one side of Hfe has 
resulted in a certain meagreness and thinness on 
other sides. No one can deny that the immense 
prosperity of America, and her extraordinary success 
in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and finance 
have produced a swollen sense of importance, which 
makes the country peddler feel as if he deserved 
some credit for the $450,000,000 balance of foreign 
trade in favour of the United States in 1907, and the 
barber's apprentice congratulate himself that Ameri- 
can wealth is reckoned at $116,000,000,000, nearly 
twice that of the next richest country in the world. 
This feeling is one that has its roots in human 
nature. The very cabin-boy on a monstrous ocean 
steamship is proud of its tonnage and speed. 

But that this spirit is not universal nor exclusive, 
that there are some Americans who are not satisfied 
— who are even rather bitterly dissatisfied — with 

117 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

$116,000,000,000 as a statement of national achieve- 
ment, the book from which I have quoted may be 
taken as a proof. There are still better proofs to be 
found, I think, in the earnestly warning voices which 
come from press and pulpit against the dangers of 
commercialism, and in the hundreds of thousands 
of noble lives which are freely consecrated to ideals 
in religion, in philanthropy, in the service of man's 
intellectual and moral needs. These services are 
ill-paid in America, as indeed they are everywhere, 
but there is no lack of men and women who are 
ready and glad to undertake them. 

I was talking to a young man and woman the other 
day, both thoroughbred Americans, who had resolved 
to enter upon the adventure of matrimony together. 
The question was whether he should accept an 
opening in business with a fair outlook for making 
a fortune, or take a position as teacher in a school 
with a possible chance at best of earning a com- 
fortable living. They asked my advice. I put the 
alternative as clearly as I could. On the one hand, 
a lot of money for doing work that was perfectly 
honest, but not at all congenial. On the other hand, 
small pay in the beginning, and no chance of ever 
receiving more than a modest competence for doing 
work that was rather hard but entirely congenial. 
They did not hesitate a moment. "We shall get 
more out of life," they said with one accord, "if 

118 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

our work makes us happy, than if we get big pay 
for doing what we do not love to do." They were 
not exceptionah They were typical of the best 
young Americans. The noteworthy thing is that 
both of them took for granted the necessity of doing 
something as long as they lived. The notion of a 
state of idleness, either as a right or as a reward, 
never entered their blessed young minds. 

In later lectures I shall speak of some of the 
larger evidences in education, in social effort, and in 
literature, which encourage the hope that the emo- 
tional life of America is not altogether a "conven- 
tional sentimentality," nor her spiritual life a com- 
plete "feebleness," nor her intelligence entirely 
"slovenly." But just now we have to consider the 
real reason and significance of the greater strength, 
the fuller development of the industrial life. Let 
us try to look at it clearly and logically. My wish 
is not to accuse, nor to defend, but first of all to 
understand. 

The astonishing industrial advance of the United 
States, and the predominance of this motive in the 
national life, come from the third element in the 
spirit of America, will-power, that vital energy of 
nature which makes an ideal of activity and effi- 
ciency. "The man who does things" is the man 
whom the average American admires. 

119 



riiK sr iRi r of amkruw 

No doubt tho oiii^inal conditions of tho nation's 
birth and gunvth woro potent in directing this 
will power, in transforming this energy into forces 
of a practical and nviterial kind. A new land 
otTered the opportunity, a wild land }>resented the 
necessity, a rich land held out the reward, to men 
who were eager to do something. Rut though the 
outward circumstances may have mouKkxl and 
developed the energy, they did not create it. 

Mexico and South America were new lands, wild 
lands, rich lands. They are not far inferior, if at all. 
to the Unitixi States in soil, climate, and natural re- 
sources. They present i\l the same kind of oppor- 
tunity, necessity, and reward to their settlers and con- 
querors. Yet they have seen nothing like the same 
industrial advance, ^^"hy? There may be many 
reasons, l^ut 1 am sure that the most important 
reasons lie in the soul of the pcx)ple, and that one 
of them is the lack, in the republics of the South, 
of that strong and confident will-power which has 
made the Americans a nation of hard and quick 
workers. 

This fondness for the active life, this impulse to 
'*do things." this sense of value in the thing done, 
does not seem to be an affair of recent growth in 
America. It is an ancestral quality. 

The men of the Re\olution were almost all of them 
busy and laborious persons, whether they were rich or 

I JO 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

poor. Read the autobiography of Benjamin Frank- 
lin, and you will find that he was as proud of the 
fact that he was a good printer and that he invented 
a new kind of stove as of anything else in his career. 
One of his life mottoes under the head of industry is: 
"Lose no time; be always employed in something 
useful; cut off all unnecessary actions." Wash- 
ington, retiring from his second term in the presi- 
dency, did not seek a well-earned ease, but turned 
at once to the active improvement of his estate. 
He was not only the richest man, he was one of the 
best practical farmers in America. His diary shows 
how willingly and steadily he rode his daily rounds, 
cultivated his crops, sought to improve the methods 
of agriculture and the condition and efficiency of his 
work-people. And this primarily not because he 
wished to add to his wealth, — for he was a child- 
less man and a person of modest habits, — but be- 
cause he felt " il faul cuUiver son jardin.'' 

After the nation had defended its independence 
and consolidated its union, its first effort was to 
develop and extend its territory. It was little more 
than a string of widely separated settlements along 
the Atlantic coast. Some one has called it a coun- 
try without an interior. The history of the pioneers 
who pushed over the mountains of the Blue Ridge 
and the Alleghanies, into the forests of Tennessee 
and Kentucky, into the valleys of the Ohio and the 

121 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

Mississippi, and so on to the broad rolling prairies 
of the West, is not without an interest to those who 
feel the essential romance of the human will in a 
world of intractable things. The transformation of 
the Indian's hunting trail into the highroad, with 
its train of creaking, white-topped wagons, and of 
the highroad into the railway, with its incessant, 
swift-rushing caravans of passengers and freight; 
the growth of enormous cities like Chicago and St, 
Louis in places that three generations ago were a 
habitation for wild geese and foxes; the harnessing 
of swift and mighty rivers to turn the wheels of 
innumerable factories; the passing of the Great 
American Desert, which once occupied the centre of 
our map, into the pasture-ground of countless flocks 
and herds, and the grain-field where the bread grows 
for many nations, — all this, happening in a hun- 
dred years, has an air of enchantment about it. 
WTiat wonder that the American people have been 
fascinated, perhaps even a little intoxicated, by the 
effect of their own will-power? 

In 1850 they were comparatively a poor people, 
with only $7,000,000,000 of national wealth, less 
than $308 per capita. In 1906 they had become 
a rich people, with $107,000,000,000 of national 
wealth, more than $1300 per capita. In 1850 they 
manufactured $1,000,000,000 worth of goods, in 
1906 $14,000,000,000 worth. In 1850 they im- 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

ported $173,000,000 worth of merchandise and ex- 
ported $144,000,000 worth. In 1906 the figures had 
changed to $1,700,000,000 of merchandise exports 
and $1,200,000,000 of imports. That is to say, in 
one year America sold to other nations six dollars' 
worth per capita more than she needed to buy from 
them. 

I use these figures, not because I find them par- 
ticularly interesting or philosophically significant, 
but because the mere size of them illustrates, and 
perhaps explains, a point that is noteworthy in the 
development of will-power in the American people: 
and that is its characteristic spirit of magnificence. 
I take this word for want of a better, and employ it, 
according to its derivation, to signify the desire to 
do things on a large scale. This is a spirit which is 
growing everywhere in the modern civilized world. 
Everywhere, if I mistake not, quantity is taking 
precedence of quality in the popular thought. 
Everywhere men are carried away by the attraction 
of huge enterprises, immense combinations, enor- 
mous results. One reason is that Nature herself 
seems to have put a premium upon the mere mass 
of things. In the industrial world it appears as if 
Napoleon were right in his observation that "God 
is on the side of the big battalions." Another reason 
is the strange, almost hypnotic, effect that number 
has upon the human mind. 

123 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

But while the spirit of "the large scale" is gain- 
ing all over the world, among the Americans it 
seems to be innate and most characteristic. Per- 
haps the very size of their country may have had 
something to do with this. The habit of dealing 
with land in terms of the square mile and the quarter- 
section, instead of in the terms of the are and the 
hectare; the subconscious effect of owning the longest 
river and the largest lakes in the world may have 
developed a half-humorous, half-serious sense of 
necessity for doing things magnificently in order 
to keep in proportion with the natural surround- 
ings. A well-known American wit, who had a slight 
impediment in his speech, moved his residence 
from Baltimore to New York. "Do you make as 
many jokes here," asked a friend, "as you used to 
make in Baltimore?" "M-m-more! " he answered; 
"b-b-bigger town!" 

To produce more corn and cotton than all the 
rest of the world together, to have a wheat crop 
which is more than double that of any other country ; 
to mine a million tons of coal a year in excess of 
any rival; to double Germany's output of steel and 
iron and to treble Great Britain's output, — these 
are things which give the American spirit the sense 
of living up to its opportunities. 

It likes to have the tallest buildings in the world. 
New York alone contains more than twenty-five 

124 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

architectural eruptions of more than twenty stories 
each. There is an edifice now completed which is 
909 feet in height. One is planned which will be 
1000 feet tall, 16 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. 
This new building will not be merely to gratify (or 
to shock) the eye like the Parisian monument of 
magnificence in architecture. "The Eiffel Tower," 
says the American, "is not a real sky-scraper, 
gratte-ciel; it is only a sky-tickler, chatouille-ciel ; 
nothing more than a jeu d'espril which man has 
played with the law of gravitation. But our Ameri- 
can tall building will be strictly for business, a 
serious affair, the office of a great life-insurance 
company." There is a single American factory 
which makes 1500 railway locomotives every year. 
There is a company for the manufacture of harvest- 
ing-machines in Chicago whose plant covers 140 
acres, whose employees number 24,000, and whose 
products go all over the world. 

Undoubtedly it was the desire to promote indus- 
trial development that led to the adoption of the 
protective tariff as an American policy. The people 
wanted to do things, to do all sorts of things, and to 
do them on a large scale. They were not satisfied 
to be merely farmers, or miners, or fishermen, or 
sailors, or lumbermen. They wished to exercise 
their energy in all possible ways, and to secure their 
125 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

prosperity by learning how to do everything nec- 
essary for themselves. They began to lay duties 
upon goods manufactured in Europe in order to 
make a better market at home for goods manufac- 
tured in America. " Protection of infant industries" 
was the idea that guided them. There have been 
occasional intervals when the other idea, that of 
liberty for needy consumers to buy in the cheapest 
market, has prevailed, and tariffs have been reduced. 
But in general the effort has been not only to raise 
a large part of the national income by duties on 
imports, but also to enhance the profits of native 
industries by putting a handicap on foreign com- 
petition. 

There can be no question that the result has been 
to foster the weaker industries and make them 
strong, and actually to create some new fields for 
American energy to work in. For example, in 1891 
there was not a pound of tin-plate made in the 
United States, and 1,000,000,000 pounds a year were 
imported. The McKinley tariff put on an import 
duty of 70 per cent. In 1901 only a little over 
100,000,000 pounds of tin-plate were imported, and 
nearly 900,000,000 pounds were made in America. 
The same thing happened in the manufacture of 
watches. A duty of 25 per cent on the foreign 
article gave the native manufacturer a profit, en- 
couraged the development of better machinery, and 

126 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

made the American watch tick busily around the 
world. Now (1908) the duty is 40 per cent ad 
valorem. 

No one in the United States would deny these 
facts. No one, outside of academic circles, would 
call himself an absolute, unmitigated, and imme- 
diate free-trader. But a great many people, prob- 
ably the majority of the Democratic party, and a 
considerable number in the Republican party, say 
to-day that many of the protective features of the 
tariff have largely accomplished their purpose and 
gone beyond it; that they have not only nourished 
weak industries, but have also overstimulated strong 
ones; that their continuance creates special privi- 
leges in the commercial world, raises the cost of the 
necessities of life to the poor man, tends to the pro- 
motion of gigantic trusts and monopolies, and en- 
courages overproduction, with all its attendant evils 
enhanced by an artificially sustained market. 

They ask why a ton of American steel rail should 
cost twenty-six or twenty-seven dollars in the country 
where it is made, and only twenty dollars in Europe. 
They inquire why a citizen of Chicago or St. Louis 
has to pay more for an American sewing-machine 
or clock than a citizen of Stockholm or Copenhagen 
pays for the same article. They say that a heavy 
burden has been laid upon the common people by a 
system of indirect taxation, adopted for a special 

127 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

purpose, and maintained long after that purpose 
has been fulfilled. They claim that for every dollar 
which this system yields to the national revenue it 
adds four or five dollars to the profits of the trusts 
and corporations. If they are cautious by tempera- 
ment, they say that they are in favour of moderate 
tariff revision. If they are bold, they announce their 
adherence to the doctrine of "tariff for revenue 
only." 

The extent to which these views have gained 
ground among the American people may be seen in 
the platforms of both political parties in the presi- 
dential contest of 1908. Both declare in favour of a 
reduction in the tariff. The Republicans are for 
continued protective duties, with revision of the 
schedules and the adoption of maximum and mini- 
mum rates, to be used in obtaining advantages from 
other nations. The Democrats are for placing prod- 
ucts which are controlled by trusts on the free list; 
for lowering the duty upon all the necessaries of 
life at once; and for a gradual reduction of the 
schedules to a revenue basis. The Democrats are 
a shade more radical than the Republicans. But 
both sides are a little reserved, a little afraid to 
declare themselves frankly and unequivocally, a 
good deal inclined to make their first appeal to the 
American passion for industrial activity and pros- 
perity. 

128 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

Personally I should like to see this reserve vanish. 
I should like to see an out-and-out campaign on the 
protection which our industries need compared with 
that which they want and get. It would clear the 
air. It would be a campaign of education. I 
remember what the greatest iron-master of America 
— Mr. Andrew Carnegie — said to me iii 1893 
when I was travelling with him in Egypt. It was 
in the second term of Cleveland's administration, 
when the prospect of tariff reduction was imminent. 
I asked him if he was not afraid that the duty on 
steel would be reduced to a point that would ruin 
his business. "Not a bit," he answered, "and I 
have told the President so. The tariff was made 
for the protection of infant industries. But the steel 
business of America is not an infant. It is a giant. 
It can take care of itself." Since that time the 
United States Steel Corporation has been formed, 
with a capitalization of about fifteen hundred million 
dollars of bonds and stock, and the import duty on 
manufactured iron and steel is 45 per cent ad valorem. 

Another effect of the direction of American 
energy to industrial affairs has been important not 
only to the United States but to all the nations of 
the world. I mean the powerful stimulus which it 
has given to invention. People with restless minds 
and a strong turn for business are always on the 
K 129 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

lookout for new things to do and new ways of 
doing them. The natural world seems to them like 
a treasure-house with locked doors which it is their 
duty and privilege to unlock. No sooner is a new 
force discovered than they want to slip a collar 
over it and put it to work. No sooner is a new 
machine made than they are anxious to improve it. 
The same propensity makes a public ready to try 
new devices, and to adopt them promptly as soon 
as they prove useful. "Yankee notions" is a slang 
name that was once applied to all sorts of curious 
and novel trifles in a peddler's stock. But to-day 
there are a hundred Yankee notions without the 
use of which the world's work would go on much 
more slowly. The cotton-gin takes the seeds from 
seven thousand pounds of cotton in just the same 
time that a hand picker formerly needed to clean a 
pound and a half. An American harvesting-machine 
rolls through a wheat-field, mowing, threshing, and 
winnowing the wheat, and packing it in bags, faster 
than a score of hands could do the work. The 
steamboat, the sewing-machine, the electric tele- 
graph, the type-writer, the telephone, the incan- 
descent light, — these are some of the things with 
which American ingenuity and energy have been 
busy for the increase of man's efficiency and power 
in the world of matter. The mysterious force or 
fluid which Franklin first drew quietly to the earth 

130 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

with his little kite and his silken cord has been put 
to a score of tasks which Franklin never dreamed of. 
And in the problem of aerial navigation, which is 
now so much in the air everywhere, it looks as if 
American inventors might be the first to reach a 
practical solution. 

I do not say that this indicates greatness. I say 
only that it shows the presence in the Spirit of 
America of a highly developed will-power, strong, 
active, restless, directed with intensity to practical 
affairs. The American inventor is not necessarily, 
nor primarily, a man who is out after money. He 
is hunting a different kind of game, and one which 
interests him far more deeply : a triumph over na- 
ture, a conquest of time or space, the training of 
a wild force, or the discovery of a new one. He 
likes money, of course. Most men do. But the 
thing that he most loves is to take a trick in man's 
long game with the obstinacy of matter. 

Edison is a typical American in this. He has 
made money, to be sure ; but very little in compari- 
son with what other men have made out of his 
inventions. And what he gains by one experiment 
he is always ready to spend on another, to risk in a 
new adventure. His real reward lies in the sense of 
winning a little victory over this secretive world, of 
taking another step in the subjugation of things to 
the will of man. 

131 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

There is probably no country where new inven- 
tions, labour-saving devices, improved machinery, 
are as readily welcomed and as quickly taken up as 
in America. The farmer wants the newest plough, 
the best reaper and mower. His wife must have a 
sewing-machine of the latest model ; his daughter a 
pianola; his son an electric runabout or a motor- 
cycle. The factories are always throwing out old 
machinery and putting in new. The junk-heap is 
enormous. The waste looks frightful; and so it 
would be, if it were not directed to a purpose which 
in the end makes it a saving. 

American cities are always in a state of transition. 
Good buildings are pulled down to make room for 
better ones. My wife says that " New York will be 
a delightful place to live in when it is finished." 
But it will never be finished. It is like Tennyson's 
description of the mystical city of Camelot : — 

" always building, 
Therefore never to be built at all." 

But unlike Camelot, it is not built to music, — 
rather to an accompaniment of various and dreadful 
noise. 

Even natural catastrophes which fall upon cities 
in America seem to be almost welcomed as an in- 
vitation to improve them. A fire laid the business 
portion of Baltimore in ashes a few years ago. Be- 

132 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

fore the smoke had dispersed, the Baltimoreans were 
saying, "Now we can have wider streets and larger 
stores." An earthquake shook San Francisco to 
pieces. The people were stimned for a little while. 
Then they rubbed the dust out of their eyes, and 
said, "This time we shall know how to build better." 

The high stimulation of will-power in America 
has had the effect of quickening the general pace 
of life to a rate that always astonishes and some- 
times annoys the European visitor. The movement 
of things and people is rapid, incessant, bewildering. 
There is a rushing tide of life in the streets, a ner- 
vous tension in the air. Business is transacted with 
swift despatch and close attention. The preliminary 
compliments and courtesies are eliminated. Whether 
you want to buy a paper of pins, or a thousand shares 
of stock, it is done quickly, I remember that I 
once had to wait an hour in the Ottoman Bank at 
Damascus to get a thousand francs on my letter of 
credit. The courteous director gave me coffee and 
delightful talk. In New York the transaction would 
not have taken five minutes, — but there would 
have been no coffee nor conversation. 

Of course the rate of speed varies considerably in 
different parts of the country. In the South it is 
much slower than in the North and the West. In 
the rural districts you will often find the old-fashioned 

^33 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

virtues of delay and deliberation carried to an ex- 
asperating point of perfection. Even among the 
American cities there is a difference in the rapidity 
of the pulse of life. New York and Chicago have 
the name of the swiftest towns. Philadelphia has 
a traditional reputation for a calm that borders on 
somnolence. "How many children have you?" 
some one asked a Chicagoan. "Four," was his 
answer; "three living, and one in Philadelphia." 

I was reading only a few day ago an amusing 
description of the impression which the American 
pas-redouble of existence made upon an amiable 
French observer, M. Hugues Le Roux, one of the 
lecturers who came to the United States on the 
Hyde foundation. He says : — 

"Everywhere you see the signs of shopkeepers who prom- 
ise to do a lot of things for you 'while you wait.' The tailor 
will press your coat, the hatter will block your hat, the shoe- 
maker will mend your shoe, — while yon wait. At the bar- 
ber shops the spectacle becomes irresistibly comic. The 
American throws himself back in an arm-chair to be shaved, 
while another artist cuts his hair; at the same time his two 
feet are stretched out to a bootblack, and his two hands are 
given up to a manicure. . . . 

'Tf 'Step lively' is the first exclamation that a foreigner 
hears on leaving the steamship, ' Quick ' is the second. Every- 
thing here is quick. In the business quarter you read in 
the windows of the restaurants, as their only guarantee of 
culinary excellence, this alluring promise : ' Quick lunch ! ' . . . 
"The American is born 'quick'; works 'quick'; eats 

134 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

'quick'; decides 'quick'; gets rich 'quick'; and dies 'quick.' 
I will add that he is buried 'quick.' Funerals cross the city 
au triple galop." 

So far as it relates to the appearance of things, 
what the philosopher would call the phenomenal 
world, this is a good, though slightly exaggerated, 
description. I have never been so fortunate as to 
see a man getting a " shave " and a " hair-cut " at 
the same moment; and it seems a little difficult 
to understand precisely how these two operations 
could be performed simultaneously, unless the man 
wore a wig. But if it can be done, no doubt the 
Americans will learn to have it done that way. As 
for the hair-cutter, the manicure, and the boot- 
black, the combination of their services is already 
an accomplished fact, made possible by the kind- 
ness of nature in placing the head, the hands, and 
the feet at a convenient distance from one another. 
Even the Parisian barbers have taken advantage of 
this fact. They sell you a bottle of hair tonic at the 
same time. 

It is true that the American moves rapidly. But 
if you should infer from these surface indications that 
he is always in a hurry, you would make a mistake. 
His fundamental philosophy is that you must be 
quick sometimes if you do not wish to be hurried 
always. You must condense, you must eliminate, 
you must save time on the httle things in order that 

135 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

you may have more time for the larger things. He 
systematizes his correspondence, the labour of his 
office, all the details of his business, not for the 
sake of system, but for the sake of getting through 
with his work. 

Over his desk hangs a printed motto: "This 
is my busy day." He does not like to arrive at 
the railway station fifteen minutes before the de- 
parture of his train, because he has something 
else that he would rather do with those fifteen 
minutes. He does not like to spend an hour in the 
barber-shop, because he wishes to get out to his 
country club in good time for a game of golf and 
a shower-bath afterward. He hkes to have a full 
life, in which one thing connects with another 
promptly and neatly, without unnecessary intervals. 
His characteristic attitude is not that of a man in a 
hurry, but that of a man concentrated on the thing 
in hand in order to save time. 

President Roosevelt has described this American 
trait in his famihar phrase, "the strenuous hfe." In 
a man of ardent and impetuous temperament it 
may seem at times to have an accent of overstrain. 
Yet this is doubtless more in appearance than in 
reality. There is probably no man in the world 
who has comfortably gotten through with more 
work and enjoyed more play than he has. 

But evidently this American type of life has its 
136 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

great drawbacks and disadvantages. In eliminat- 
ing the intervals it is likely to lose some of the 
music of existence. In laying such a heavy stress 
upon the value of action it is likely to overlook the 
part played by reflection, by meditation, by tran- 
quil consideration in a sane and well-rounded 
character. 

The critical faculty is not that in which Ameri- 
cans excel. By this I do not mean to say that they 
do not find fault. They do, and often with vigour 
and acerbity. But fault-finding is not criticism in 
the true sense of the word. Criticism is a disin- 
terested effort to see things as they really are, to 
understand their causes, their relations, their effects. 
In this effort the French intelligence seems more at 
home, more penetrating, better balanced than the 
American. 

Minds of the type of Sainte Beuve or Brunetiere 
are not common, I suppose, even in France. But 
in America they are still more rare. Clear, intel- 
ligent, thoroughgoing, well-balanced critics are not 
much in evidence in the United States ; first, be- 
cause the genius of the country does not tend to 
produce them ; and second, because the taste of the 
people does not incline to listen to them. 

There is a spirit in the air which constantly cries, 
"Act, act!" 

" Let us still be up and doing." 
137 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

The gentle voice of that other spirit which whispers, 
"Consider, that thou mayest be wise," is often un- 
heard or unheeded. 

It is plain that the restless impulse to the active 
life, coming from the inward fountain of will-power, 
must make heavy drafts upon its source, and put a 
severe strain upon the channels by which it is con- 
veyed. The nerves are worn and frayed by con- 
stant pressure. America is the country of young 
men, but many of them look old before their time. 
Nervous exhaustion is common. Neurasthenia, I 
believe, is called "the American disease." 

Yet, curiously enough, it was in France that the 
best treatment of this disease was developed, and 
one of the most famous practitioners. Dr. Charcot, 
died, if I mistake not, of the complaint to the cure 
of which he had given his life. In spite of the fact 
that nervous disorders are common among Ameri- 
cans, they do not seem to lead to an unusual num- 
ber of cases of mental wreck. I have been looking 
into the statistics of insanity. The latest figures 
that I have been able to find are as follows: In 
1900 the United States had 106,500 insane per- 
sons in a population of 76,000,000. In 1896 Great 
Britain and Ireland had 128,800 in a population of 
37,000,000. In 1884 France had 93,900 in a popu- 
lation of 40,000,000. That would make about 328 
insane persons in 100,000 for Great Britain, 235 in 

138 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

every 100,000 for France, 143 in every 100,000 for 
America. 

Nor does the wear and tear of American life, 
great as it may be, seem to kill people with extraor- 
dinary rapidity. As a matter of fact, M. Le Roux 
was led away by the allurements of his own style 
when he wrote that the American "dies quick." In 
1900 the annual death-rate per 1000 in Austria was 
25, in Italy 23, in Germany 22, in France 21, in 
Belgium 19, in Great Britain 18, and in the United 
States 17. In America the average age at death in 
1890 was 31 years; in 1900 it was 35 years. Other 
things, such as climate, sanitation, hygiene, have to 
be taken into account in reading these figures. But 
after making all allowance for these things, the 
example of America does not indicate that an active, 
busy, quick-moving life is necessarily a short one. 
On the contrary, hard work seems to be wholesome. 
Employed energy favours longevity. 

But what about the amount of pleasure, of real 
joy, of inward satisfaction that a man gets out of 
life ? Who can make a general estimate in a matter 
which depends so much upon individual tempera- 
ment? Certainly there are some deep and quiet 
springs of happiness which look as if they were in 
danger of being choked and lost, or at least which 
do not flow as fully and freely as one could wish, in 
America. 

139 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

The tranquil pleasure of the household where 
parents and children meet in intimate, well-ordered, 
affectionate and graceful fellowship — the foyer, as 
the best French people understand and cherish it 
— is not as frequent in America as it might be, nor 
as it used to be. There are still many sweet and 
refreshing homes, to be sure. But "the home" as a 
national institution, the centre and the source of 
life, is being crowded out a little. Children as well 
as parents grow too busy for it. 

Human intercourse, also, suffers from the lack 
of leisure, and detachment, and delight in the in- 
terchange of ideas. The average American is not 
silent. He talks freely and sometimes well, but he 
usually does it with a practical purpose. Political 
debate and business discussion are much more in 
his Hne than general conversation. Thus he too 
often misses what Montaigne and Samuel Johnson 
both called one of the chief joys of life, — "a good 
talk." I remember one morning, after a certain 
dinner in New York, an acquaintance who was one 
of the company met me, and said, "Do you know 
that we dined last night with thirty millions of 
dollars?" "Yes," I said, "and we had conversa- 
tion to the amount of about thirty cents." 

Popular recreations and amusements, pleasures 
of the simpler kind such as are shared by masses 
of people on public holidays, do not seem to afford 

140 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

as much relaxation and refreshment in America as 
they do in Germany or France. Children do not 
take as much part in them. There is an air of 
effort about them, as if the minds of the people 
were not quite free from care. The Englishman is 
said to take his pleasure sadly. The American is 
apt to take his strenuously. 

Understand, in all this I am speaking in the most 
general way, and of impressions which can hardly 
be defined, and which certainly cannot be mathe- 
matically verified. I know very well that there 
are many exceptions to what I have been saying. 
There are plenty of quiet rooms in America, club- 
rooms, college-rooms, book-rooms, parlours, where 
you will find the best kind of talk. There are 
houses full of children who are both well-bred and 
happy. There are people who know how to play, 
with a free heart, not for the sake of winning, but 
for the pleasure of the game. 

Yet I think it true that a strong will-power di- 
rected chiefly to industrial success has had a harden- 
ing effect upon the general tone of life. Unless you 
really love work for its own sake, you will not be 
very happy in America. The idea of a leisure class 
is not fully acclimatized there. Men take it for 
granted that there must be something useful for 
them to do in the world, even though they may not 
have to earn a living. 

141 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

This brings me to the last point of which I wish 
to speak: the result of will-power and work in the 
production of wealth, and the real status of the 
Almighty Dollar in the United States. 

The enormous increase of wealth has been ac- 
companied by an extraordinary concentration of it 
in forms which make it more powerful and impres- 
sive. Moody's Manual of Corporatio?i Statistics 
says that there are four hundred and forty large 
industrial, franchise, and transportation trusts, of 
an important and active character, with a floating 
capital of over twenty bilHon dollars. When we 
remember that each of these corporations is in the 
eye of the law a person, and is able to act as a person 
in financial, industrial, and political affairs, we begin 
to see the tremendous significance of the figures. 

But we must remember also that the growth of 
individual fortunes and of family estates has been 
equally extraordinary. Millionnaires are no longer 
counted. It is the multi-millionnaires who hold the 
centre of the stage. The New York World Almanac 
gives a list of sixteen of these families of vast wealth, 
tracing the descent of their children and grand- 
children with scrupulous care, as if for an Almanach 
de Gotha. I suppose that another list might be 
made twice as large, — three or four times as large, 
— who knows how large, — of people whose for- 
tune runs up into the tens of milHons. 

142 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

These men have a vast power in American finance 
and industry, not only by the personal possession of 
money, but also through the control of the great 
trusts, railroads, banks, in which they have invested 
it. The names of many of them are familiar through- 
out the country. Their comings and goings, their 
doings, opinions, and tastes are set forth in the 
newspapers. Their houses, their estabHshments, in 
some cases are palatial; in other cases they are 
astonishingly plain and modest. But however that 
may be, the men themselves, as a class, are promi- 
nent, they are talked about, they hold the public 
attention. 

Wliat is the nature of this attention? Is it the 
culminating rite in the worship of the Almighty 
Dollar? No; it is an attention of curiosity, of 
natural interest, of critical consideration. 

The dollar per se is no more almighty in America 
than it is anywhere else. It has just the same kind 
of power that the franc has in France, that the 
pound has in England : the power to buy the things 
that can be bought. There are foolish people in 
every country who worship money for its own sake. 
There are ambitious people in every country who 
worship money because they have an exaggerated 
idea of what it can buy. But the characteristic 
thing in the attitude of the Americans toward money 
is this: not that they adore the dollar, but that 
143 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

they admire the energy, the will-power, by which 
the dollar has been won. 

They consider the multi-millionnaire much less as 
the possessor of an enormous fortune than as the 
successful leader of great enterprises in the world 
of affairs, a master of the steel industry, the head 
of a great railway system, the developer of the pro- 
duction of mineral oil, the organizer of large con- 
cerns which promote general prosperity. He repre- 
sents to them achievement, force, courage, tireless 
will-power. 

A man who is very rich merely by inheritance, 
who has no manifest share in the activities of the 
country, has quite a different place in their atten- 
tion. They are entertained, or perhaps shocked, 
by his expenditures, but they regard him hghtly. 

It is the man who does things, and does them 
largely, in whom they take a serious interest. They 
are inclined, perhaps, to pardon him for things that 
ought not to be pardoned, because they feel so 
strongly the fascination of his potent will, his prac- 
tical efficiency. 

It is not the might of the dollar that impresses 
them, it is the might of the man who wins the dol- 
lar magnificently by the development of American 
industry. 

This, I assure you, is the characteristic attitude of 
the typical American toward wealth. It does not 

144 



WILL-POWER, W^ORK, AND WEALTH 

confer a social status by itself in the United States 
any more than it does in England or in France. 
But it commands public attention by its relation to 
national will-power. 

Of late there has come into this attention a new 
note of more searching inquiry, of sharper criticism, 
in regard to the use of great wealth. 

Is it employed for generous and noble ends, for 
the building and endowment of hospitals, of public 
museums, libraries, and art galleries, for the support 
of schools and universities, for the education of the 
negro? Then the distributer is honoured. 

Is it devoted even to some less popular purpose, 
like Egyptian excavations, or polar expeditions, or 
the endowment of some favourite study, — some 
object which the mass of the people do not quite 
understand, but which they vaguely recognize as 
having an ideal air? Then the donor is respected 
even by the people who wonder why he does that 
particular thing. 

Is it merely hoarded, or used for selfish and ex- 
travagant luxury? Then the possessor is regarded 
with suspicion, with hostility, or with half-humorous 
contempt. 

There is, in fact, as much difference in the com- 
parative standing of multi-millionnaires in America 
as there is in the comparative standing of lawyers 
or politicians. Even in the same family, when a 

L 145 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

great fortune is divided, the heir who makes a good 
and fine use of the inheritance receives the tribute 
of affection and praise, while the heir who hoards 
it, or squanders it ignobly, receives only the tribute 
of notoriety, — which is quite a different thing. 
The power of discrimination has not been altogether 
blinded by the gHtter of gold. The soul of the 
people in America accepts the law of the moral 
dividend which says Richesse oblige. 

Here I might stop, were it not for the fact that still 
another factor is coming into the attitude of the 
American people toward great wealth, concentrated 
wealth. There is a growing apprehension that the 
will-power of one man may be so magnified and 
extended by the enormous accumulation of the 
results of his energy and skill as to interfere with 
the free exercise of the will-power of other men. 
There is a feeling that great trusts carry within 
themselves the temptation to industrial oppression, 
that the liberty of individual initiative may be 
threatened, that the private man may find himself 
in a kind of bondage to these immense and potent 
artificial personalities created by the law. 

Beyond a doubt this feeling is spreading. Beyond 
a doubt it will lead to some peaceful effort to regu- 
late and control the great corporations in their 
methods. And if that fails, what then? Probably 
an effort to make the concentration of large wealth 

146 



WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 

in a few hands more difficult if not impossible. 
And if that fails, what then ? Who knows ? But I 
think it is not likely to be anything of the nature of 
communism. 

The ruling passion of America is not equahty, 
but personal freedom for every man to exercise 
his will-power under a system of self-rehance and 
fair play. 



147 



V 

COMMON ORDER AND SOCIAL 
COOPERATION 



COMMON ORDER AND SOCIAL COOPERA- 
TION 

It is a little strange, and yet it seems to be true, 
that for a long time America was better understood 
by the French than by the English. This may be 
partly due to the fact that the French are more idealis- 
tic and more excitable than the English; in both of 
which qualities the Americans resemble them. It 
may also be due in part to the fact that the American 
Revolution was in a certain sense a family quarrel. 
A prolonged conflict of wills between the older 
and the younger members of the same household 
develops prejudices which do not easily subside. 
The very closeness of the family relation intensifies 
the misunderstanding. The seniors find it extremely 
difficult to comprehend the motives of the juniors, or 
to believe that they are really grown up. They 
seem like naughty and self-confident children. A 
person outside of the family is much more likely to 
see matters in their true light. 

At all events, in the latter part of the eighteenth 
century, when Dr. Samuel Johnson was calling the 
Americans "a. race of convicts, who ought to be 
thankful for anything we allow them short of hang- 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

ing," and declaring that he was wilhng to love all 
mankind except the Americans, whom he described 
as "Rascals — Robbers — Pirates," a Frenchman, 
named Crevecoeur, who had lived some twenty years 
in New York, gave a different portrait of the same 
subject. 

"What then is the American," he asks, "this new 
man? He is either a European or the descend- 
ant of a European, hence that strange mixture of 
blood which you will find in no other country. 
I could point out to you a family whose grandfather 
was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose 
son married a Frenchwoman, and whose present four 
sons have now wives of four different nations. . . . 
Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new 
race of men whose labours and posterity will one day 
cause great changes in the world. Americans are the 
western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them 
that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry 
which began long since in the East. They will 
finish the great circle." 

This is the language of compliment, of course. It 
is the saying of a very polite prophet; and even in 
prophecy one is inclined to like pleasant manners. 
Yet that is not the reason why it seems to Americans 
to come much nearer to the truth than Dr. John- 
son's remarks, or Charles Dickens's American Notes, 
or Mrs. Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Ameri- 

152 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

cans. It is because the Frenchman has been clear- 
sighted enough to recognize that the Americans 
started out in life with an inheritance of civihzed 
ideals, manners, aptitudes, and powers, and that 
these did not all come from one stock, but were 
assembled from several storehouses. This fact, as 
I have said before, is fundamental to a right under- 
standing of American character and history. But it 
is particularly important to the subject of this 
lecture: the sentiment of common order, and the 
building-up of a settled, decent, sane life in the 
community. 

Suppose, for example, that a family of barbarians, 
either from some native impulse, or under the in- 
fluence of foreign visitors, should begin to civilize 
themselves. Their course would be slow, irregular, 
and often eccentric. It would alternate between 
servile imitation and wild originality. Sometimes 
it would resemble the costume of that Australian 
chief who arrayed himself in a stove-pipe hat and 
polished boots and was quite unconscious of the need 
of the intermediate garments. 

But suppose we take an example of another kind, 
— let us say such a family as that which was 
made famous fifty years ago by a well-known work 
of juvenile fiction, The Swiss Family Robinson. 
They are shipwrecked on a desert island. They 
carry ashore with them their tastes, their habits, 

153 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

their ideas of what is desirable and right and fitting 
for decent people in the common life. It is because 
their souls are not naked that they do not wish their 
bodies to become so. It is because there is already 
a certain order and proportion in their minds that 
they organize their tasks and their time. The 
problem before them is not to think out a civilized 
existence, but to realize one which already exists 
within them, and to do this with the materials which 
they find on their island, and with the tools and im- 
plements which they save from their wrecked ship. 

Here you have precisely the problem which con- 
fronted the Americans. They began housekeeping 
in a wild land, but not as wild people. An English 
lady once asked Eugene Field of Chicago whether 
he knew anything about his ancestors. "Not much, 
madam," he replied, "but I believe that mine lived 
in trees when they were first caught." This was an 
illustration of conveying truth by its opposite. 

The English Pilgrims who came from Norwich 
and Plymouth, the Hollanders who came from Am- 
sterdam and Rotterdam, the Huguenots who came 
from La Rochelle and Rouen were distinctly not tree- 
dwellers nor troglodytes. They were people who 
had the habits and preferences of a well-ordered 
life in cities of habitation, where the current of exist- 
ence was tranquil and regular except when dis- 
turbed by the storms of war or religious persecution. 

IS4 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

And those who came from the country districts, 
from the little villages of Normandy and Poitou and 
Languedoc, of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire and 
Cornwall, of Friesland and Utrecht, of the Rhenish 
Palatinate, and of the north of Ireland, were not 
soldiers of fortune and adventurers. They were for 
the most part peaceable farmers, whose ideal of 
earthly felicity was the well-filled barn and the com- 
fortable fireside. 

There were people of a different sort, of course, 
among the settlers of America. England sent a good 
many of her bankrupts, incurable idlers, masterless 
men, sons of Belial, across the ocean in the early days. 
Some writers say that she sent as many as 50,000 of 
them. Among the immigrants of other nations 
there were doubtless many "who left their country 
for their country's good." It is silly to indulge in 
illusions in regard to the angelic purity and unmixed 
virtue of the original American stock. 

But the elements of turbulence and disorder were 
always, and are still, in the minority. Whatever 
interruption they caused in the development of a 
civilized and decent life was local and transient. 
The steady sentiment of the people who were in 
control was in favour of common order and social 
cooperation. 

There is a significant passage in the diary of John 
Adams, written just after the outbreak of mob 

155 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

violence against the loyalists in 1775. A man had 
stopped him, as he was riding along the highway, to 
congratulate him on the fury which the patriots and 
their congress had stirred up, and the general dissolu- 
tion of the bonds of order. 

" Oh, Mr. Adams, what great things have you and 
your colleagues done for us. We can never be 
grateful enough to you. There are no courts of 
justice now in this province, and I hope there will 
never be another." Upon which the indignant 
Adams comments: ''Is this the object for which I 
have been contending, said I to myself, for I rode 
along without any answer to this wretch; are these 
the sentiments of such people, and how many of them 
are there in this country ? Half the nation for what 
I know : for half the nation are debtors, if not more; 
and these have been in all countries the sentiments of 
debtors. If the power of the country should get into 
such hands, and there is great danger that it will, to 
what purpose have we sacrificed our time, our health, 
and everything else?" 

But the fears of the sturdy old Puritan and patriot 
were not realized. It was not into the hands of such 
men as he despised and dreaded, nor even into the 
hands of such men as Mr. Rudyard Kipling's imagi- 
nary American, 

" Enslaved, illogical, elate . . . 
Unkempt, disreputable, vast,'* 

156 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

that the power of the country fell. It was into the 
hands of men of a very different type, intelligent as 
well as independent, sober as well as self-reliant, 
inheritors of principles well-matured and defined, 
friends of liberty in all their policies, but at the bottom 
of their hearts lovers and seekers of tranquil order. 

I hear the spirit of these men speaking in the 
words of him who was the chosen leader of the people 
in peace and in war. Washington retired from his 
unequalled public service with the sincere declaration 
that he wished for nothing better than to partake, 
"in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign in- 
fluence of good laws under a free government, the 
ever favourite object of my heart, and the happy re- 
ward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labours, and 
dangers." 

In these nobly simple and eloquent words, the 
great American expresses clearly the fourth factor in 
the making of his country, — the love of common 
order. Here we see, in the mild light of unconscious 
self-revealment, one of the chief ends which the Spirit 
of America desires and seeks. Not merely a self- 
reliant life, not merely a life of equal opportunity 
for all, not merely an active, energetic life in which 
the free-will of the individual has full play, but also 
a life shared with one's fellow-citizens under the 
benign influence of good laws, a life which is con- 
trolled by principles of harmony and fruitful in 
XS7 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

efforts cooperant to a common end, a life rangee, 
ordonnee, et soUdaire, — this is the American ideal. 

With what difficulty men worked out this ideal 
in outward things in the early days we can hardly 
imagine. Those little communities, scattered along 
the edge of the wilderness, had no easy task to 
establish and maintain physical orderliness. Na- 
ture has her own order, no doubt, but her ways are 
different from man's ways; she is reluctant to sub- 
mit to his control ; she does not like to have her hair 
trimmed and her garments confined ; she even com- 
municates to man, in his first struggles with her, a 
little of her own carelessness, her own apparently reck- 
less and wasteful way of doing things. "Rough and 
ready" is a necessary maxim of the frontier. It is 
hard to make a new country or a log cabin look neat. 

To this day in America, even in the regions which 
have been long settled, one finds nothing like the ex- 
cellent trimness, the precise and methodical arrange- 
ment, of the little farmsteads of the Savoy among 
which these lectures were written. My memory often 
went back, last summer, from those tiny unfenced 
crops laid out like the squares of a chess-board in the 
valleys, from those rich pastures hanging like green 
velvet on the steep hillsides, from those carefully 
tended forests of black firs, from those granges with 
the little sticks of wood so neatly piled along their 
sides under the shelter of the overhanging eaves, to 

158 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

the straggling fences, the fallow fields, the unkempt 
meadows, the denuded slopes, the shaggy under- 
brush, the tumbled woodpiles, and the general signs 
of waste and disorder which may be seen in so many 
farming districts of the United States. I asked 
myself how I could venture to assure a French 
audience, in spite of such apparent evidences to the 
contrary, that the love of order was a strong factor 
in the American spirit. 

But then I began to remember that those farms 
of New England and New York and New Jersey were 
won only a few generations ago from a trackless and 
savage wilderness ; that the breadth of their acres 
had naturally tempted the farmer to neglect the less 
fruitful for the more productive; that Nature herself 
had put a larger premium upon energy than upon 
parsimony in these first efforts to utilize her re- 
sources; and that, after all, what I wished to describe 
and prove was not an outward triumph of universal 
orderliness in material things, but an inward desire 
of order, the wish to have a common life well 
arranged and regulated, tranquil and steady. 

Here I began to see my way more clear. Those 
farms of eastern America, which would look to a for- 
eigner so rude and ill-kept, have nourished a race of 
men and women in whom regularity and moral 
steadiness and consideration of the common welfare 
have been characteristic traits. Their villages and 
159 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

towns, with few exceptions, are well cared for physi- 
cally; and socially, to use a phrase which I heard 
from one of my guides in Maine, they are "as calm 
as a clock." They have their Village Improvement 
Societies, their Lyceum Lecture Courses, their 
Public Libraries, their churches (often more than 
they need), and their schoolhouses, usually the 
finest of all their buildings. They have poured into 
the great cities, year after year, an infusion of strong 
and pure American blood which has been of the 
highest value, not only in filling the arteries of 
industry and trade and the professions with a fresh 
current of vigorous life, but also in promoting the 
rapid assimilation of the mass of foreign immigrants. 
They have sent out a steady flood of westward-moving 
population which has carried with it the ideals and 
institutions, the customs and the habits, of common 
order and social cooperation. 

On the crest of the advancing wave, to be sure, there 
is a picturesque touch of foam and fury. The first 
comers, the prospectors, miners, ranchers, land-grab- 
bers, lumbermen, adventurers, are often rough and 
turbulent, careless of the amenities, and much given 
to the profanities. But they are the men who 
break the way and open the path. Behind them 
come the settlers bringing the steady life. 

I could wish the intelligent foreigner to see the 
immense corn-fields of Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas, 

1 60 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

the vast wheat-fields of the Northwest, miles and miles 
of green and golden harvest, cultivated, reaped, and 
garnered with a skill and accuracy which resembles 
the movements of a mighty army. I could wish him 
to see the gardens and orchards of the Pacific slope, 
miles and miles of opulent bloom and fruitage, 
watered by a million streams, more fertile than the 
paradise of Damascus, I could wish him to see the 
towns and little cities which have grown up as if by 
magic everywhere, each one developing an industry, 
a social life, a civic consciousness of its own, in forms 
which, though often bare and simple, are almost 
always regular and respectable even to the point of 
monotony. Then perhaps he would believe that the 
race which has done these things in a hundred years 
has a real and deep instinct of common order. 

But the peculiarly American quality in this in- 
stinct is its individualism. It does not wish to be 
organized. It wishes to organize itself. It craves 
form, but it dislikes formality. It prizes and 
cherishes the sense of voluntary effort more than the 
sense of obedience. It has its eye fixed on the end 
which it desires, a peaceable and steady life, a tran- 
quil and prosperous community. It sometimes over- 
looks the means which are indirectly and obscurely 
serviceable to that end. It is inclined to be suspicious 
of any routine or convention whose direct practical 
benefit is not self-evident. It has a slight contempt 
M i6i 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

for etiquette and manners as superficial things. Its 
ideal is not elegance, but utility; not a dress-parade, 
but a march in comradeship toward a common goal. 
It is reluctant to admit the value of the parade even 
as a discipline and preparation for the march. Often 
it demands so much liberty for the individual that the 
smooth interaction of the different parts of the com- 
munity is disturbed or broken. 

The fabric of common order in America is sound 
and strong at the centre. The pattern is well-marked, 
and the threads are firmly woven. But the edges are 
ragged and unfinished. Many of our best cities have 
a fringe of ugliness and filth around them which is 
like a torn and bedraggled petticoat on a woman 
otherwise well dressed. 

Approaching New York, or Cincinnati, or Pittsburg, 
or Chicago, you pass first through a delightful region, 
where the homes of the prosperous are spread upon 
the hills, reminding you of a circle of Paradise ; and 
then through a region of hideous disorder and new 
ruins, which has the aspect of a circle of Purgatory, 
and makes you doubt whether it is safe to go any 
farther for fear you may come to a worse place. 
This neglected belt of hideous suburbs around some 
of the richest cities in the world is typical and 
symbolical. It speaks of the haste with which 
things have been done; of the tendency to overlook 
detail, provided the main purpose is accomplished; 

162 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

of the lack of thoroughness, and the indifference 
to appearance, which are common American faults. 
It suggests, also, the resistance which a strong 
spirit of individualism offers to civic supervision and 
control; the tenacity with which men cling to their 
supposed right to keep their houses in dirt and dis- 
order; the difficulty of making them comply with 
general laws of sanitation and public improvement; 
and the selfishness with which land-owners will leave 
their neglected property to disfigure the city from 
whose growth they expect in ten or twenty years to 
reap a large profit. 

Yet, as a matter of fact, this very typical mark of an 
imperfect sense of the value of physical neatness and 
orderliness in American life is not growing, but dimin- 
ishing. The fringes of the cities are not nearly as bad 
as they were thirty or forty years ago. In many of 
them, — notably in Philadelphia and Boston and 
some of the western cities, — beauty has taken the 
place of ugliness. Parks and playgrounds have been 
created where formerly there were only waste places 
filled with rubbish. Tumble-down shanties give 
way to long rows of trim little houses. Even the 
factories cease to look like dingy prisons and put on 
an air of self-respect. Nuisances are abolished. 
The country can draw near to the city without 
holding its nose. 

This gradual improvement, also, is symbolical. 
163 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

It speaks of individualism becoming conscious of its 
own defects and dangers. It speaks of an effort on 
the part of the more intelligent and public-spirited 
citizens to better the conditions of life for all. It 
speaks of a deep instinct in the people which responds 
to these efforts and supports them with the necessary 
laws and enactments. It speaks most of all, I hope, 
of that underlying sense of common order which is 
one of the qualities of the Spirit of America. 

Let me illustrate this, first, by some observations on 
the average American crowd. 

The obvious thing about it which the foreigner is 
likely to notice is its good humour. It is largely 
made up of native optimists, who think the world is 
not a bad place to live in, and who have a cheerful 
expectation that they are going to get along in it. 
Although it is composed of rather excitable indi- 
viduals, as a mass it is not easily thrown into passion 
or confusion. The emotion to which it responds 
most quickly is neither anger nor fear, but laughter. 

But it has another trait still more striking, and that 
is its capacity for self-organization. Watch it in 
front of a ticket-office, and see how quickly and in- 
stinctively it forms " the line." No police are needed. 
The crowd takes care of itself. Every man finds 
his place, and the order once established is strictly 
maintained by the whole crowd. The man who tries 
to break it is laughed at and hustled out. 

164 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

When an accident happens in the street, the throng 
gathers in a moment. But it is not merely curious. 
It is promptly helpful. There is some one to sit on 
the head of the fallen horse, — a dozen hands to un- 
buckle the harness; if a litter is needed for the 
wounded man, it is quickly improvised, and he is 
carried into the nearest shop, while some one sends a 
"hurry call" for the doctor and the ambulance. 

Until about forty years ago, the whole work of 
fighting fire in the cities was left to voluntary 
effort. Companies of citizens were formed, like 
social or political clubs, which purchased fire- 
engines, and organized themselves into a brigade 
ready to come at the first alarm of a conflagration. 
The crowd came with them and helped. I have seen 
a church on Sunday morning emptied of all its able- 
bodied young men by the ringing of the fire-bell. 
It is true that there was a keen rivalry among these 
voluntary fire-fighters which sometimes led them to 
fight one another on [their way to a conflagration. 
But out of these free associations have grown the 
paid fire-departments of the large cities, with their 
fine tradition of courage and increased efficiency. 

If you wish to see an American crowd in its most 
extraordinary aspect, you should go to a political 
convention for the nomination of a President. The 
streets swarming with people^ all hurrying in one 
direction, talking loudly, laughing, cheering; the 

165 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

vast, barn-like hall draped with red, white, and blue 
bunting, and packed with 12,000 of the 200,000 
folks who have tried to get into it; the thousand 
delegates sitting together in solid cohorts according 
to the States which they represent, each cohort ready 
to shout and cheer and vote as one man for its 
"favourite son"; the officers on the far-away plat- 
form, Lilliputian figures facing, directing, dominat- 
ing this Brobdignagian mass of humanity; the buzz- 
ing of the audience in the intervals of business ; the 
alternate waves of excitement and uneasiness that 
sweep over it; the long speeches, the dull speeches, 
the fiery speeches, the outbreaks of laughter and ap- 
plause, the coming and going of messengers, the 
waving of flags and banners, — what does it all 
mean ? What reason or order is there in it ? What 
motives guide and control this big, good-natured 
crowd ? 

Wait. You are at the Republican Convention in 
Chicago. The leadership of Mr. Roosevelt in the 
party is really the point in dispute, though not a 
word has been said about it. A lean, clean-cut, in- 
cisive man is speaking, the Chairman of the con- 
vention. Presently he shoots out a sentence referring 
to "the best abused and the most popular man in 
America." As if it were a signal given by a gun, 
that phrase lets loose a storm, a tempest of applause 
for Roosevelt, — cheers, yells, bursts of song, the 

166 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

blowing of brass-bands, the roaring of megaphones, 
the waving of flags; more cheers like volleys of 
musketry; a hurricane of vocal enthusiasm, dying 
down for a moment to break out in a new place, 
redoubling itself in vigour as if it had just begun, 
shaking the rafters and making the bunting flutter 
in the wind. For forty-seven minutes by the clock 
that American crowd pours out its concerted enthusi- 
asm, and makes a new "record" for the length of a 
political demonstration. 

Now change the scene to Denver, a couple of weeks 
later. The Democrats are holding their convention. 
You are in the same kind of a hall, only a little larger, 
filled with the same kind of a crowd, only more of it. 
The leadership of Mr. Bryan is the point in dispute, 
and everybody knows it. Presently a speaker on the 
platform mentions "the peerless son of Nebraska" 
and pauses as if he expected a reply. It comes like 
an earthquake. The crowd breaks into a long, in- 
describable, incredible tumult of applause, just like 
the other one, but lasting now for more than eighty 
minutes, — a new "record" of demonstration. 

What are these scenes at which you have assisted ? 
The meetings of two entirely voluntary associations 
of American citizens, who have agreed to work to- 
gether for political purposes. And what are these 
masses of people who are capable of cheering in 
unison for three-quarters of an hour, or an hour and 

167 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

a quarter ? Just two American crowds showing their 
enthusiasm for their favourites. 

What does it all prove ? 

Nothing, — I think, — except an extraordinary 
capacity for self-organization. 

But the Spirit of America shows the sense of 
common order in much deeper and more significant 
things than the physical smoothing and polishing of 
town and country, or than the behaviour of an aver- 
age crowd. It is of these more important things that 
I wish to give some idea. 

It has been said that the first instinct of the Ameri- 
cans, confronted by a serious difficulty or problem, 
is to appoint a committee and form a society. 
Whether this be true or not, I am sure that many, if 
not most, of the advances in moral and social order 
in the United States during the last thirty or forty 
years have been begun and promoted in this way. 
It is, in fact, the natural way in a conservative republic. 

Where public opinion rules, expressing itself more 
or less correctly in popular suffrage, no real reform 
can be accomplished without first winning the opinion 
of the public in its favour. Those who believe in 
the reform must get together in order to do this. 
They must gather their evidence, present their argu- 
ments, show why and how certain things ought to be 
done, and urge the point until the public sees it. 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

Then, in some cases, legislation follows. The 
moral sense, or it may be merely the practical 
common sense, le gros hon sens de menage, of the 
community, takes shape in some formal statute or 
enactment. A State or municipal board or com- 
mission is appointed, and the reform passes from 
the voluntary to the organic stage. The association 
or committee which promoted it disappears in a 
blaze of congratulation, or perhaps continues its 
existence to watch the enforcement of the new laws. 

But there is another class of cases in which no 
formal legislation seems to be adequate to meet the 
evils, or in which the process of law-making is impeded 
or perhaps altogether prevented by the American 
system of dividing the power between the national, 
State, and local governments. Here the private 
association of public-spirited citizens must act as a 
compensating force in the body politic. It must take 
what it can get in the way of partial organic reform, 
and supply what is lacking by voluntary cooperation. 

There is still a third class of evils which seem to 
have their roots not in the structure of society, but 
in human nature itself, and for these the typical 
American believes that the only amelioration is a 
steady and friendly effort by men of good-will. 
He does not look for the establishment of the millen- 
nium by statute. He does not think that the im- 
personal State can strengthen character, bind up 

169 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

broken hearts, or be a nursing mother to the ignorant, 
the wounded, and the helpless. For this work there 
must always be a personal service, a volunteer ser- 
vice, a service to which men and women are bound, 
not by authority, but by the inward ties of philan- 
thropy and religion. 

Now these three kinds of voluntary cooperation for 
the bettering of the common order are not peculiar 
to America. One finds them in every nation that has 
the seed of progress in its mind or the vision of the 
civitas Dei in its soul, — and nowhere more than in 
France. The French have a genius for society and 
a passion for societies. But I am not sure that they 
understand how much the Americans resemble them 
in the latter respect, and how much has been ac- 
complished in the United States by way of voluntary 
social cooperation under an individualistic system. 

Take the subject of hospitals. I was reading 
the other day a statement by M. Jules Huret in his 
extraordinary work En Amerique: — 

"At Pittsburg, the industrial hell, which contains 60,000 
Italians, and 300,000 Slavs, Croats, Hungarians, etc., in the 
city and its suburbs, — at Pittsburg, capital of the Steel Trust, 
which distributes 700 millions of interest and dividends every 
year, — there is no hospital ! " 

This is wonderfully incorrect. It greatly exagger- 
ates the foreign population of Pittsburg. It entirely 
ignores the fact that there are fifteen public hospitals, 

170 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

and eighteen private liospitals in the Smoky City. 
(Paris has fifteen pubh'c hospitals.) 

In New York there are more than forty hospitals, 
of which six are municipal institutions, while the 
others are incorporated by associations of citizens 
and supported largely by benevolent gifts ; and more 
than forty free dispensaries for the treatment of 
patients and the distribution of medicines. In fact, 
the dispensaries increased so rapidly, a few years ago, 
that the regular physicians complained that their 
business was unfairly reduced. They said that pros- 
perous people went to the dispensary to save expense; 
and they humbly suggested that no patient who wore 
diamonds should be received for free treatment. 

In the United States in 1903 there were 1500 hos- 
pitals costing about $29,000,000 a year for mainte- 
nance : $9,000,000 of this came from public funds, 
and the remaining $20,000,000 from charitable gifts 
and from paying patients. One-third of the patients 
were in public institutions, the other two-thirds in 
hospitals under private or religious control. There 
is not a city of any consequence in America which is 
without good hospital accommodations; and there 
are few countries in the world where it is more com- 
fortable for a stranger to break a leg or have a mild at- 
tack of appendicitis. All this goes to show that the 
Americans recognize the care of the sick and wounded 
as a part of the common order. They perceive that 

171 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

the State never has been, and probably never will 
be, able to do all that is needed without the help of 
benevolent individuals, religious bodies, and philan- 
thropic societies. 

How generously this help is given in America, 
not only for hospitals, but for all other objects of 
benevolence, may be seen from the fact that the 
public gifts and bequests of private citizens for the 
year 1907 amounted to more than $100,000,000. 

Let me give another illustration of voluntary social 
cooperation in this sphere of action which lies at 
least in part beyond the reach of the State. In all 
the American cities of large size, you will find in- 
stitutions which are called "Settlements," — a vague 
word which has been defined to mean "homes in the 
poorer quarters of a city where educated men and 
women may live in daily contact with the working peo- 
ple." The first house of this kind to be established 
was Toynbee Hall in London, in 1885. Two years 
later the Neighbourhood Guild was founded in New 
York, and in 1889 the College Settlement in the same 
city, and Hull House in Chicago, were established. 
There are now reported some three hundred of such 
settlement houses in the world, of which England 
has 56, Holland 11, Scotland 10, France 4, Ger- 
many 2, and the United States 207. I will take, as 
examples, Hull House in Chicago, and the Henry 
Street Settlement in New York. 

172 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

Hull House was started by two ladies who went 
into one of the worst districts of Chicago and took 
a house with the idea of making it a radiating centre 
of orderly and happy life. Their friends backed them 
up with money and help. After five years the enter- 
prise was incorporated. The buildings, which are of 
the most substantial kind, now cover a whole city 
block, some forty or fifty thousand square feet, and, 
include an apartment house, a boys' club, a girls' 
club, a theatre, a gymnasium, a day nursery, work- 
shops, class rooms, a coffee-house, and so on. There 
are forty-four educated men and women in residence 
who are engaged in self-supporting occupations, and 
who give their free time to the work of the settle- 
ment. A hundred and fifty outside helpers come 
every week to serve as teachers, friendly visitors, or 
directors of clubs : 9000 people a week come to the 
house as members of some one of its organizations or 
as parts of an audience. There are free concerts, and 
lectures, and classes of various kinds in study and in 
handicraft. Investigations of the social and industrial 
conditions of the neighbourhood are carried on, not 
officially, but informally; and the knowledge thus 
obtained has been used not only for the visible 
transformation of the region around Hull House, 
but also to throw light upon the larger needs and 
possibilities of improvement in Chicago and other 
American cities. Hull House, in fact, is an example 

173 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

of ethical and humane housekeeping on a big scale 
in a big town. 

The Henry Street Settlement in New York is 
quite different in its specific quality. It was begun 
in 1893 by two trained nurses, who went down into 
the tenement-house district, to find the sick and to 
nurse them in their homes. At first they lived in a 
tenement house themselves ; then the growth of their 
work and the coming of other helpers forced them to 
get a little house, then another, and another, a cot- 
tage in the country, a convalescent home. The idea 
of the settlement was single and simple. It was to 
meet the need of intelligent and skilful nursing in the 
very places where dirt and ignorance, carelessness 
and superstition, were doing the most harm, — 

"in the crowded warrens of the poor." 

This little company of women, some twenty or thirty 
of them, go about from tenement to tenement, 
bringing cleanliness and order with them. In the 
presence of disease and pain they teach lessons which 
could be taught in no other way. They nurse five 
or six thousand patients every year, and make forty 
or fifty thousand visits. In addition to this, largely 
through their influence and example, the Board of 
Education has adopted a trained nursing service in 
the public schools, and has appointed a special corps 
of nurses to take prompt charge of cases of contagious 

174 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

disease among the school children. The Nurses' 
Settlement, in fact, is a repetition of the parable of the 
Good Samaritan in a crowded city instead of on a 
lonely road. 

These two examples illustrate the kind of work 
that is going on all over the United States. Every 
religious body, Jewish or Christian, has some part in 
it. It touches many sides of life, — this effort to do 
for the common order what the State has never been 
able to accomplish fully, — to sweeten and humanize 
it. I wish that there were time to speak of some 
particularly interesting features, like the Children's 
Aid Society, the George Junior Republic, the Associa- 
tion for Improving the Condition of the Poor, the 
Kindergarten Association. But now I must pass at 
once to the second kind of social effort, that in which 
the voluntary cooperation of the citizen enlightens 
and guides and supplements the action of the State. 

Here I might speak of the great question of the 
housing of the poor, and of the relation of private 
building and loan associations to governmental 
regulation of tenements and dwelling-houses. This 
is one of the points on which America has lagged 
behind the rest of the civilized world. Our excessive 
spirit of laissez-faire, and our cheerful optimism, — 
which in this case justifies the cynical definition of 
optimism as "an indifference to the sufferings of 
others," — permitted the development in New York 

175 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

of the most congested and rottenly overcrowded 
ten acres on the face of the habitable globe. But the 
Tenement House Commission of 1894, and the other 
commissions which followed it, did much to improve 
conditions. A fairly good Tenement House Act was 
passed. A special Department of the municipality 
was created to enforce it. The dark interior rooms, 
the vile and unsanitary holes, the lodgings without 
water or air or fire-escapes, are being slowly but surely 
broken up and extirpated, and a half-dozen private 
societies, combining philanthropy with business, are 
building decent houses for working people, which 
return from 3 per cent to 5 per cent on the capital 
invested. 

For our present purpose, however, it will be better 
to take an example which is less complicated, 
and in which the cooperation of the State and the 
good-will of the private citizen can be more closely 
and simply traced. I mean the restriction and the 
regulation of child labour. 

Every intelligent nation sees in its children its 
most valuable asset. That their physical and 
moral development should be dwarfed or paralyzed 
by bondage to exhausting and unwholesome labour, 
or by a premature absorption in toil of any kind, 
would be at once a national disgrace and a national 
calamity. 

Three kinds of societies have been and still are at 
176 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

work in America to prevent this shame and disaster. 
First, there are the societies which are devoted to the 
general protection of all the interests of the young, 
like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Children. 

Then there are the societies which make their ap- 
peal to the moral sense of the community to condemn 
and suppress all kinds of inhumanity in the conduct 
of industry and trade. Of these the Consumers' 
League is an example. Founded in New York in 
1890, by a few ladies of public spirit, it has spread 
to twenty other States, with sixty-four distinct societies 
and a national organization for the whole country. 
Its central idea is to persuade people, rich and poor, 
to buy only those things which are made and sold 
under fair and humane conditions. The responsi- 
bility of men and women for the way in which they 
spend their money is recognized. They are asked to 
remember that the cheapness of a bargain is not the 
only thing for them to consider. They ought to think 
whether it has been made cheap at the cost of human 
sorrow and degradation, whether the distress and 
pain and exhaustion of overtasked childhood and 
ill-treated womanhood have made their cheap bargain 
a shameful and poisonous thing. The first work of 
the leagues was to investigate the actual condition of 
labour in the great stores. The law forbade them to 
publish a black list of the establishments where the 
N 177 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

employees were badly treated. That would have 
been in the nature of a boycott. But they ingeniously 
evaded this obstacle by publishing a white list of those 
which treated their people decently and kindly. 
Thus the standard of a '■'Fair House^^ where a living 
wage was paid, where children of tender years were 
not employed, where the hours of work were not ex- 
cessive, and where the sanitary conditions were good, 
was established, and that standard has steadily been 
raised. 

Then the leagues went on to investigate the condi- 
tions of production of the goods sold in the shops. 
The National League issues a white label which 
guarantees that every article upon which it is found 
has been manufactured in a place where, (i) the 
State factory law is obeyed, (2) no children under 
sixteen years of age are employed, (3) no night work 
is required and the working-day does not exceed ten 
hours, (4) no goods are given out to be made away 
from the factory. At the same time the Consumers' 
League has been steadily pressing the legislatures and 
governors of the different States for stricter and better 
laws in regard to the employment of women and 
children. 

The third class of societies which are at work in 
this field are those which deal directly with the 
question of child labour. It must be remembered 
that under the American system this is a matter which 

178 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

is left to the control of the separate States. Natu- 
rally there has been the greatest imaginable diversity 
among them. For a long time there were many that 
had practically no laws upon the subject, or laws 
so defective that they were useless. Even now the 
States are far from anything like harmony or equality 
in their child-labour laws. Illinois, Massachusetts, 
New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin are 
probably in the lead in good legislation. If we may 
judge by the statistics of children between ten and 
fourteen years who are unable to read or write, 
Tennessee, Mississippi, the Carolinas, Louisiana, 
Georgia, and Alabama are in the rear. 

It must be remembered, also, that the number of 
children between ten and fifteen years employed in 
manufacturing pursuits in the United States increased 
from 1890 to 1900 more than twice as fast as the popu- 
lation of the country, and that the Census of 1900 
gives the total of bread-winners under fifteen years 
of age as 1,750,000. A graphic picture of the actual 
condition of child labour in the United States may 
be found in The Cry of the Children, by Mrs. 
John Van Vorst (New York, 1908). 

Here is a little army — no, a vast army — of little 
soldiers, whose sad and silent files are full of menace 
for the republic. 

The principal forces arrayed against this perilous 
condition of things have been the special committees 

179 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

of the Women's Clubs everywhere, the Child-Labour 
Committees in different States, and finally the Na- 
tional Child-Labour Committee organized in 1904. 
Through their efforts there has been a great advance 
in legislation on the subject. In 1905, twenty-two 
States enacted laws regulating the employment of 
children. In 1906 there were six States which legis- 
lated, including Georgia and Iowa, which for the first 
time put a law against child labour on their statute- 
books. In 1907 eight States amended their laws. 
In the same year a national investigation of the sub- 
ject was ordered by Congress under direction of the 
Federal Commissioner of Labour. 

A bill was prepared which attempted to deal with 
the subject indirectly through that provision of the 
Constitution which gives Congress the power to 
"regulate commerce." This bill proposed to make 
it unlawful to transport from one State to another the 
product of any factory or mine in which children un- 
der fourteen years of age were employed. It was a 
humane and ingenious device. But it is doubtful 
whether it can ever be made an effective law. The 
best judges think that it stretches the idea of the 
regulation of interstate commerce beyond reasonable 
limits, and that the national government has no power 
to control industrial production in the separate States 
without an amendment to the Constitution. If this 
be true (and I am inclined to believe it is), then the 

180 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

best safeguard of America against the evils of child 
labour must be persistent action of these private asso- 
ciations in each community, investigating and report- 
ing the actual conditions, awakening and stimulating 
the local conscience, pushing steadily for better State 
laws, and, when they are enacted, still working to 
create a public sentiment which will enforce them. 

It is one thing to love your own children and care 
for them. It is another thing to have a wise, tender, 
protecting regard for all the children of your country. 
We wish and hope to see better and more uniform 
laws against child labour in America. But, after all, 
nothing can take the place of the sentiment of fa- 
therhood and motherhood in patriotism. And that 
comes and stays only through the voluntary effort 
of men and women of good-will. 

The last sphere in which the sense of common 
order in America has been expressed and promoted 
by social cooperation is that of direct and definite 
reform accomplished by legislation, as a result, at 
least in part, of the work of some society or committee, 
formed for that specific purpose. Here a small, 
but neat, illustration is at hand. 

For many years America practised, and indeed 
legally sanctioned, the habit of literary piracy. 
Foreign authors were distinctly refused any protection 
in the United States for the fruit of their intellectual 

i8i 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

labours. A foreigner might make a hat, and no one 
could steal it. He might cultivate a crop of potatoes, 
and no one could take them from him without paying 
for them. But let him write a book, and any one 
could reprint it, and sell it, and make a fortune out 
of it, without being com.pelled to give the unhappy 
author a penny. American authors felt the shame 
of this state of things, — and the disorder, too, for it 
demoralized the book-trade and brought a mass of 
stolen goods into cheap competition with those which 
had paid an honest royalty to their makers. A 
Copyright League was formed which included all the 
well-known writers of America. After years of hard 
work this league secured the passage of an inter- 
national copyright law which gave the same protection 
to the foreigner as to the American author, providing 
only, under the protective tariff system, that his 
book must be printed and manufactured in the 
United States. 

But the most striking and important example 
of this kind of work is that of the Civil Service Re- 
form Association, which was organized in 1877. Here 
a few words of explanation are necessary. 

In the early history of the United States the 
number of civil offices under the national govern- 
ment was comparatively small, and the appointments 
were generally made for ability and fitness. But as 
the country grew, the number of offices increased 

182 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

with tremendous rapidity. By 1830 the so-called 
' Spoils System ' which regarded them as prizes of po- 
litical war, to be distributed by the successful party 
in each election for the reward and encouragement of 
its adherents, became a fixed idea in the public mmd. 
The post-offices, the custom-houses, all departments 
of the civil service, were treated as rich treasuries of 
patronage, and used first by the Democrats and then 
by the Republicans, to consolidate and perpetuate 

partisan power. ^ 

It was not a question of financial corruption, of 
bribery with money. It was worse. It was a ques- 
tion of the disorder and impurity of the national 
housekeeping, of the debauchment and degradation 
of the daily business of the State. 

Notoriously unfit persons were appointed to re- 
sponsible positions. The tenure of office was brief 
and insecure. Every presidential election threat- 
ened to make a clean sweep of the hundreds of thou- 
sands of people who were doing the necessary routme 
work of the nation. Federal office-holders were 
practically compelled to contribute to campaign 
expenses, and to work and fight, like a host of mer- 
cenaries, for the success of the party which kept 
them in place. Confusion and inefficiency prevailed 

everywhere. . 

In 1871 the condition of affairs had become mtol- 
erable. President Grant, in his first term, recom- 

183 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

mended legislation, and appointed a national civil 
service commission, with George William Curtis at 
its head. Competitive examinations were begun, 
and a small appropriation was made to carry on 
the work. But the country was not yet educated 
up to the reform. Congress was secretly and stub- 
bornly opposed to it. The appropriation was with- 
drawn. The work of the commission was ridiculed, 
and in his second term, in 1875, Grant was obliged 
to give it up. 

Then the Civil Service Reform Association, with 
men like George William Curtis, Carl Schurz, 
Dorman B. Eaton, and James Russell Lowell as its 
leaders, was organized. A vigorous and systematic 
campaign of public agitation and education was 
begun. Candidates for the Presidency and other 
elective offices were called to declare their policy on 
this question. 

The war of opinion was fierce. The assassination 
of President Garfield, in 1881, was in some measure 
due to the feeling of hostility aroused by his known 
opposition to the Spoils System. His successor, 
Vice-President Arthur, who was supposed to be a 
spoilsman, surprised everybody by his loyalty to 
Garfield's policy on this point. And in 1883 a bill 
for the reform of the Civil Service was passed and a 
new commission appointed. The next President 
was Grover Cleveland, an ardent and fearless friend 

184 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

of the reform, who greatly increased its practical 
efficiency. He fought against Congress, both in his 
first and in his second term, to enlarge the scope 
and operation of the act by bringing more offices 
into the classified and competitive service. In his 
second term, by executive order, he increased the 
number of classified positions from forty-three thou- 
sand to eighty-seven thousand. 

Presidents Harrison and McKinley worked in the 
same direction. And President Roosevelt, whose 
first national office was that of Civil Service Com- 
missioner from 1889 to 1895, has raised and strength- 
ened the rules, and applied the merit system to the 
consular service and other important departments 
of governmental work. 

The result is that out of three hundred and twenty- 
five thousand positions in the executive civil service 
one hundred and eighty-five thousand are now clas- 
sified, and appointments are made either under com- 
petitive examination or on the merit system for proved 
efficiency. This is an immense forward step in the 
promotion of common order, and it is largely the 
result of the work of the Civil Service Reform 
Association, acting upon the formation of public 
opinion. I believe it would be impossible for any 
candidate known to favour the Spoils System to be 
elected to the Presidency of the United States 
to-day. 

18S 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

A moment of thought will show the bearing of 
this illustration upon the subject which we are now 
considering. Here was a big, new, democratic 
people, self-reliant and sovereign, prosperous to a 
point where self-complacency was almost inevitable, 
and grown quite beyond the reach of external cor- 
rection and control. They had fallen into wretched 
habits of national housekeeping. Their domestic 
service was disorderly and incompetent. The party 
politicians, on both sides, were interested in main- 
taining this bad service, because they made a profit 
out of it. The people had been hardened to it; they 
seemed to be either careless and indifferent, in their 
large, happy-go-lucky way, or else positively at- 
tached to a system which stirred everything up every 
four years and created unlimited opportunities for 
office-seeking and salary-drawing. What power 
could save them from their own bad judgment? 

There was no higher authority to set them right. 
Everything was in their own hands. The case looked 
hopeless. But in less than thirty years the voluntary 
effort of a group of clear-sighted and high-minded 
citizens changed everything. An appeal to the 
sense of common order, of decency, of propriety, 
in the soul of the people created a sentiment which 
was too strong for the selfish politicians of either 
party to resist. The popular will was enlightened, 
converted, transformed, and an orderly, just, business- 

i86 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

like administration of the Civil Service became, if 
not an accomplished fact, at least a universal and 
acknowledged aim of national desire and effort. 

It is to precisely the same source that we must 
look with hope for the further development of har- 
mony, and social equilibrium, and efficient civic 
righteousness, in American affairs. It is by pre- 
cisely the same process that America must save herself 
from the perils and perplexities which are inherent in 
her own character and in the form of government 
which she has evolved to fit it. 

That boastful self-complacency which is the carica- 
ture of self-reliance, that contempt for the minority 
which is the mockery of fair play, that stubborn per- 
sonal lawlessness which is the bane of the strong will 
and the energetic temperament, can be restrained, 
modified, corrected, and practically conquered, only 
by another inward force, — the desire of common or- 
der, the instinct of social cooperation. And there is 
no way of stimulating this desire, of cultivating this 
instinct, at least for the American republic, except the 
way of voluntary effort and association among the 
men and women of good-will. 

One looks with amazement upon the vast array 
of "societies" of all kinds which have sprung into 
being in the United States during the last thirty years. 
They cover every subject of social thought and en- 

187 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

deavour. Their documents and pamphlets and cir- 
culars fill the mails. Their appeals for contributions 
and dues tax the purse. To read all that they print 
would be a weariness to the flesh. To attend all their 
meetings and conferences would wreck the most ro- 
bust listener. To speak at all of them would ruin the 
most fluent orator. A feeling of humorous discour- 
agement and dismay often comes over the quiet man 
who contemplates this astonishing phase of American 
activity. 

But if he happens also to be a conscientious man, he 
is bound to remember, on the other side, that the 
majority of these societies exist for some practical 
end which belongs to the common order. The 
Women's Clubs, all over the country, have been 
powerful promoters of local decency and good legis- 
lation. The Leagues for Social Service, for Political 
Education, for Municipal Reform, have investigated 
conditions, collected facts, and acted as "clearing- 
houses for human betterment." The White Ribbon, 
and Red Ribbon, and Blue Ribbon Clubs have 
worked for purity and temperance. The Prison Asso- 
ciations have sought to secure the treatment of 
criminals as human beings. The City Clubs, and 
Municipal Leagues, and Vigilance Societies have 
acted as unpaid watchmen over the vital interests of 
the great cities. The Medical and Legal Societies 
have used their influence in behalf of sanitary reform 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

and the improvement of the machinery and methods 
of the courts. 

There is no subject affecting the common welfare 
on which Congress would venture to legislate to-day 
until the committee to which the bill had been re- 
ferred had first given a public hearing. At these 
hearings, which are open to all, the societies that are 
interested present their facts and arguments, and 
plead their cause. 

Even associations of a less serious character seem 
to recognize their civic responsibilities. The Society 
of the Sons of the Revolution prints and distributes, 
in a dozen different languages, a moral and patriotic 
pamphlet of "Information for Immigrants." The 
Sportsmen's Clubs take an active interest in the im- 
provement and enforcement of laws for the protec- 
tion of fish and game. The Audubon Societies in 
many parts of the country have stopped, or at least 
checked, the extermination of wild birds of beauty and 
song for the supposed adornment of women's hats. 

It cannot be denied that there are still many and 
grave defects in the common order of America. For 
example, when a bitter and prolonged conflict be- 
tween organized capital and organized labour para- 
lyzes some necessary industry, we have no definite and 
sure way of protecting that great third party, the help- 
less consuming public. In the coal strike, a few 

189 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

years ago, the operators and the workmen were at a 
deadlock, and there was a good prospect that many 
people would freeze to death. But President Roose- 
velt, with the approval of men like ex-President 
Cleveland, forced or persuaded the two warring 
parties to go on with the mining of coal, while a com- 
mittee of impartial arbitration settled their dispute. 

We have no uniformity in our game laws, our for- 
estry laws, our laws for the preservation and purity 
of the local water-supply. As these things are left to 
the control of the separate States, it will be very diffi- 
cult to bring them all into harmony and good order. 

The same thing is true of a much more important 
matter, — the laws of marriage and divorce. Each 
State and Territory has its own legislation on this 
subject. In consequence there are fifty-one distinct 
divorce codes in the United States and their Terri- 
tories, South Carolina grants no divorce; New 
York and North Carolina admit only one cause ; New 
Hampshire admits fourteen. In some of the States, 
like South Dakota, a legal residence of six months is 
sufficient to qualify a person to sue for a divorce; 
and those States have always a transient colony of 
people who are anxious to secure a rapid separation. 

The provisions in regard to re-marriage are vari- 
ous and confusing. A man who is divorced under 
the law of South Dakota and marries again can 
be convicted of bigamy in New York. 

190 



COMMON ORDER AND COOPERATION 

All this is immensely disorderly and demoralizing. 
The latest statistics which are accessible show that 
there were 25,000 divorces in the United States in the 
year 1886. The annual number at present is esti- 
mated at nearly 60,000. 

But the work which is being done by the National 
League for the Protection of the Family, and the 
united efforts of the churches, which have been deeply 
impressed with the need of awakening and elevating 
public sentiment on this subject, have already pro- 
duced an improvement in many States. It is possible 
that a much greater uniformity of legislation may be 
reached, even though a national law may not be 
feasible. It is certain that the effective protection of 
the family must be secured in America, as elsewhere, 
by a social education and cooperation which will 
teach men and women to think of the whole subject 
"reverently, soberly, and in the fear of God, duly 
considering the causes for which marriage was 
ordained." 

In this, and in all other things of like nature, we 
Americans look into the future not without misgivings 
and fears, but with an underlying confidence that the 
years will bring a larger and nobler common order, 
and that the Republic will be peace. 

In the minor problems we shall make many mis- 
takes. In the great problems, in the pressing emer- 

191 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

gencies, we rely upon the moral power in reserve. 
The sober soul of the people is neither frivolous nor 
fanatical. It is earnest, ethical, desirous of the com- 
mon good, responsive to moral appeal, capable of 
self-control, and, in the time of need, strong for self- 
sacrifice. It has its hours of illusion, its intervals of 
indifference and drowsiness. But while there are 
men and women passionately devoted to its highest 
ideals, and faithful in calling it to its duties, it will not 
wholly slumber nor be lost in death. 

If there is to be an American aristocracy, it shall not 
be composed of the rich, nor of those whose only pride 
is in their ancient name, but of those who have done 
most to keep the Spirit of America awake and eager 
to solve the problems of the common order, of those 
who have spoken to her most clearly and steadily, by 
word and deed, reminding her that 

"By the Soul 
Only, the Nations shall be great and free." 



192 



VI 

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND 
EDUCATION 



VI 

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND 
EDUCATION 

The Spirit of America shows its ingrained indi- 
vidualism nowhere more clearly than in education. 
First, by the breadth of the provision which it makes, 
up to a certain point, for everybody who wishes to 
be educated. Second, by the entire absence of any- 
thing like a centralized control of education. Third, 
by the remarkable evolution of different types of 
educational institutions and the liberty of choice 
which they offer to each student. 

All this is in the nature of evidence to the existence 
of a fifth quality in the Spirit of America, closely con- 
nected with the sense of self-reliance and a strong will- 
power, intimately related to the love of fair play and 
common order, — a keen appreciation of the value of 
personal development. 

Here again, as in the previous lectures, what we 
have to observe and follow is not a logical syllogism, 
nor a geometrical proposition neatly and accurately 
worked out. It is a natural process of self-realization. 
It is the history of the soul of a people learning how 
to think for itself. As in government, in social 
order, in organized industry, so in education, America 

195 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

has followed, not the line of least resistance, nor the 
line of abstract doctrine, but the line of vital impulse. 

And whence did this particular impulse spring? 
From a sense of the real value of knowledge to man 
as man. From a conviction that there is no natural 
right more precious than the right of the mind to 
grow. From a deep instinct of prudence reminding a 
nation in which the people are the sovereign that it 
must attend to "the education of the prince." 

These are the feelings and convictions, very plain 
and primitive in their nature, which were shared 
by the real makers of America, and which have ever 
since controlled her real leaders. They are in strik- 
ing contrast with the views expressed by some of the 
strangers who were sent out in early times to govern 
the colonies; as, for example, that Royal Governor 
Berkeley who, writing home to England from Vir- 
ginia in the seventeenth century, thanked God that 
"no public schools nor printing-presses existed in the 
colony," and added his "hope that they would not be 
introduced for a hundred years, since learning brings 
irreligion and disobedience into the world, and the 
printing-press disseminates them and fights against 
the best intentions of the government." 

But this Governor Berkeley was of a dififerent type 
from that Bishop Berkeley who came to the western 
world to establish a missionary training-school, and, 
failing in that, gave his real estate at Newport and his 

196 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

library of a thousand books to the infant Yale College 
at New Haven ; of a different type from those Dutch 
colonists of New Amsterdam who founded the first 
American public school in 162 1; of a different type 
from those Puritan colonists of Massachusetts Bay 
who established the Boston Latin School in 1635 and 
Harvard College in 1636; of a different type from 
Franklin, who founded the Philadelphia Circulating 
Library in 1731, the American Philosophical Society 
in 1744, and the Academy of Pennsylvania in 1749; 
of a different type from Washington, who urged the 
foundation of a national university and left property 
for its endowment by his last will and testament; 
of a different type from Jefferson, who desired to have 
it recorded upon his tombstone that he had rendered 
three services to his country — the framing of the 
Declaration of Independence, the purchase of the 
Louisiana Territory from France, and the founding 
of the University of Virginia. 

Among the men who were most responsible, 
from the beginning, for the rise and growth and con- 
tinuance of the spirit of self-reliance and fair play, 
of active energy and common order in America, there 
was hardly one who did not frequently express his con- 
viction that the spread of public intelligence was nec- 
essary to these ends. Among those who have been 
most influential in the guidance of the republic, 
nothing is more remarkable than their agreement in 

197 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

the opinion that education, popular and special, is 
friendly to republican institutions. 

This agreement is not a mere formal adherence to 
an academic principle learned in the same school. 
For there has been the greatest possible difference 
in the schooling of these men. Adams, Jefferson, 
Madison, Monroe, Hamilton, Webster, Hayes, Gar- 
field, Harrison, Roosevelt, had a college training; 
Washington, Franklin, Marshall, Jackson, Van 
Buren, Clay, Lincoln, Cleveland, McKinley, did not. 

The sincere respect for education which is typical 
of the American spirit is not a result of education. 
It is a matter of intuitive belief, of mental character, 
of moral temperament. First of all, the sure convic- 
tion that every American child ought to have the 
chance to go to school, to learn to read, to write, to 
think ; second, the general notion that it is both fair 
and wise to make an open way for every one who is 
talented and ambitious to climb as far as he can and 
will in the higher education ; third, the vague feeling 
that it will be to the credit and benefit of democracy 
not only to raise the average level of intelligence, but 
also to produce men and institutions of commanding 
excellence in learning and science and philosophy, — 
these are the three elements which you will find 
present in varying degrees in the views of typical 
Americans in regard to education. 

I say that you will find these elements in varying 
198 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

degrees, because there has been, and there still is, 
some divergence of opinion as to the comparative em- 
phasis to be laid on these three points — the school- 
house door open to everybody, the college career open 
to all the talents, and the university providing un- 
limited opportunities for the disinterested pursuit of 
knowledge. 

Which is the most important? How far may the 
State go in promoting the higher education? Is it 
right to use the public funds, contributed by all the 
taxpayers, for the special advantage of those who 
have superior intellectual powers ? Where is the line 
to be drawn between the education which fits a boy 
for citizenship, and that which merely gratifies his 
own tastes or promotes his own ambition? 

These are questions which have been seriously, 
and, at times, bitterly debated in America. But, 
meantime, education has gone steadily and rapidly 
fonvard. The little public school of New Amsterdam 
has developed into an enormous common-school 
system covering the United States and all their Terri- 
tories. The little Harvard College at Cambridge has 
become the mother of a vast brood of institutions, 
public and private, which give all kinds of instruction, 
philosophical, scientific, literary, and technical, and 
which call themselves colleges or universities accord- 
ing to their own fancy and will. 

A foreigner visiting the country for the first time 
199 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

might well think it had a touch of academic mania. 
A lecturer invited to describe the schools and colleg:es 
of the United States in a single discourse might well 
feel as embarrassed as that famous diplomat to whom 
his companion at dinner said, between the soup and 
the fish, "I am so glad to meet you, for now you can 
tell me all about the Far Eastern Question and make 
me understand it." Let me warn you against ex- 
pecting anything of that kind in this lecture. I am 
at least well enough educated to know that it is im- 
possible to tell all about American education in an 
hour. The most that I can hope to do is to touch on 
three points : — 

First, the absence of centralized control and the 
process of practical unification in educational work 
in the United States. 

Second, the growth and general character of the 
common schools as an expression of the Spirit of 
America. 

Third, the relation of the colleges, universities, and 
technical institutes to the life of the republic. 

I. First, it should be distinctly understood "and 
remembered that there is absolutely no national system 
of education in America. 

The government at Washington has neither power 
nor responsibility in regard to it. There is no Minis- 
try of Public Instruction; there are no Federal In- 
spectors; there is no regulation from the centre. 

200 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

The whole thing is local and voluntary to a degree 
which must seem to a Frenchman incomprehensible 
if not reprehensible. In consequence it is both simple 
and complicated, — simple in its practical working, 
and extremely complicated in its general aspect. 

The reasons for this lack of a national system and a 
centralized control are not far to seek. In the first 
place, at the time when the Union was formed, many 
different European influences were already at work 
fostering different educational ideals in various parts 
of the country. No doubt the English influence was 
predominant, especially in New England. Harvard 
College at Cambridge in Massachusetts may be 
regarded as the legitimate child of Emmanuel 
College at Cambridge in England. But the develop- 
ment of free common schools, especially in the Middle 
States, was more largely affected by the example of 
Holland, France, and Switzerland than by England. 
The Presbyterians of New Jersey, when they founded 
Princeton College in 1746, naturally turned to Scot- 
land for a model. 

In Virginia, through Thomas Jefferson, a strong 
French influence was felt. A Frenchman, Quesnay, 
who had fought in the American army of the Revolu- 
tion, proposed to establish a National Academy of 
Arts and Sciences in Richmond, with branches at 
Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, to give 
advanced instruction in all branches of human 

201 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

learning. He had the approval of many of the best 
people in France and Virginia, and succeeded in 
raising 60,000 francs towards the endowment. The 
corner-stone of a building was laid, and one professor 
was chosen. But the scheme failed, because, in 1786, 
both America and France were busy and poor. 
Jefferson's plan for the University of Virginia, which 
was framed on French lines, was put into successful 
operation in 1825. 

It would have been impossible at any time in the 
early history of the United States — indeed, I think 
it would be impossible now — to get a general agree- 
ment among the friends of education in regard to the 
form and method of a national system. 

Another obstacle to a national system was the 
fact that the colleges founded before the Revolu- 
tion — William and Mary, Har\^ard, Yale, Princeton, 
Columbia — were practically supported and con- 
trolled by different churches — Congregational, Pres- 
byterian, or Episcopalian. Churches are not easy to 
combine. 

Still another obstacle, and a more important one, 
was the sentiment of local independence, the spirit of 
home rule which played such a prominent part in the 
mise en schne of the American drama. Each of the 
distinct States composing the Union was tenacious of 
its own individuality, and jealous of the local rights 
by which alone that individuality could be preserved. 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

The most significant and potent of these rights was 
that of educating the children and youth of the 
community. 

The States which entered the Union later brought 
with them the same feeling of local pride and respon- 
sibility. Ohio with its New England traditions, 
Kentucky with its Southern traditions, Michigan 
with its large infusion of French blood and thought, 
Wisconsin with its vigorous German and Scandi- 
navian element, — each of these communities felt 
competent and in honour bound to attend to its own 
educational affairs. So far as the establishment and 
control of schools, colleges, and universities is con- 
cerned, every State of the Union is legally as indepen- 
dent of all the other States as if they were separate 
European countries like France and Germany and 
Switzerland. Therefore, we may say that the Ameri- 
can system of education is not to have a system. 

But if we stop here, we rest upon one of those half- 
truths which are so dear to the pessimist and the 
satirist. The bare statement that there is no national 
system of education in America by no means ex- 
hausts the subject. Taken by itself, it gives a false 
impression. Abstract theory and formal regulation 
are not the only means of unification. Nature and 
human nature have their own secrets for creating 
unity in diversity. This is the process which has been 
at work in American education. 

203 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

First of all, there has been a general agreement 
among the States in regard to the vital necessity 
of education in a republic. The constitution of 
Massachusetts, adopted in 1780, reads thus: "Wis- 
dom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused gener- 
ally among the people, being necessary for the 
preservationof their rights and liberties; and as these 
depend on spreading the opportunities and advan- 
tages of education in the various parts of the country, 
and among the different orders of the people, it shall 
be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all 
future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the 
interests of literature and the sciences, and all semi- 
naries of them, especially the university at Cambridge, 
public schools, and grammar schools in the towns ; to 
encourage private societies and public institutions, 
rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agricul- 
ture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, 
and a natural history of the country ; to countenance 
and inculcate the principles of humanity and general 
benevolence, public and private charity, industry and 
frugality, honesty and punctuality, in their dealings, 
sincerity, good humour, and all social affections and 
generous sentiments among the people," After such 
a sentence, one needs to take breath. It is a full 
programme of American idealism, written in the 
English of the eighteenth century, when people had 
plenty of time. The new constitution of North 

204 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Carolina adopted in 1868 puts the same idea in terse 
modern style: "The people have the right to the 
privilege of education, and it is the duty of the State 
to guard and maintain that right." You will find 
the same principle expressed in the constitutions of 
all the American commonwealths. 

In the next place, the friendly competition and 
rivalry among the States produced a tendency to 
unity in education. No State wished to be left be- 
hind. The Southern States, which for a long time 
had neglected the matter of free common schools, 
were forced by the growth of illiteracy, after the 
Civil War, to provide for the schooling of all their 
children at public expense. The Western States, com- 
ing into the Union one by one, had a feeling of pride 
in offering to their citizens facilities for education 
which should be at least equal to those offered in 
"the effete East." It is worthy of note that the most 
flourishing State Universities now are west of the 
AUeghanies. The only States which have more than 
90 per cent of the children from five to eighteen years 
of age enrolled in the common schools are Colorado, 
Nevada, Idaho, and Washington, — all in the far 
West. 

Furthermore, the free intercourse and exchange of 

population between the States have made for unity 

in the higher education. Methods which have 

proved successful in one community have been imi- 

205 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

tated and adopted in others. Experiments tried at 
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Columbia have been 
repeated in the West and South. Teachers trained in 
the older colleges have helped to organize and develop 
the new ones. 

Nor has this process of assimilation been confined 
to American ideas and models. European methods 
have been carefully studied and adapted to the needs 
and conditions of the United States. I happen to 
know of a new Institute of Technology which has 
been recently founded in Texas by a gift of eight 
millions of dollars. The president-elect is a scientific 
man who has already studied in France and Germany 
and achieved distinction in his department. But 
before he touches the building and organization of his 
new Institute, he is sent to Europe for a year to see the 
oldest and the newest and the best that has been done 
there. In fact, the Republic of Learning to-day is the 
true Cosmopolis. It knows no barriers of nationality. 
It seeks truth and wisdom everywhere, and wher- 
ever it finds them, it claims them for its own. 

The spirit of voluntary cooperation for the promo- 
tion of the common order, of which I spoke in a pre- 
vious lecture, has made itself felt in education by the 
formation of Teachers' Associations in the various 
States, and groups of States, and by the foundation 
of the National Educational Association, a voluntary 
body incorporated in the District of Columbia, "to 

206 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

elevate the character and advance the interests of the 
profession of teaching, and to promote the cause of 
education in the United States." 

Finally, while there is no national centre of authority 
for education in the United States, there is a strong 
central force of encouragement and enlightenment. 
The Federal Government shows its interest in 
education in several ways: First, in the enormous 
grants of public lands which it has made from the 
beginning for the endowment of common schools 
and higher institutions in the various States. 

Second, in the control and support of the United 
States Military Academy at West Point, the Naval 
Academy at Annapolis, the Indian Schools, the 
National Museum, and the Congressional Library, 
and in the provision which it makes for agri- 
cultural and mechanical schools in different parts 
of the country. The annual budget for these pur- 
poses runs from twelve to twenty millions of dollars 
a year. 

Third, in the establishment of a National Bureau 
of Education which collects statistics and information 
and distributes reports on all subjects connected with 
the educational interests of America. The Com- 
missioner at the head of this bureau is a man of high 
standing and scholarship. He is chosen without 
reference to politics, and holds his office independent 
of party. He has no authority to make appointments 

207 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

or regulations. But he has a large influence, through 
the light which he throws upon the actual condition of 
education, in promoting the gradual and inevitable 
process of unification. 

Let me try to sum up what I have been saying on 
this difficult subject of the lack of system and the 
growth of unity in American education. There is 
no organization from the centre. But there is a dis- 
tinct organization from the periphery, — if I may use 
a scientific metaphor of such an unscientific character. 
The formative principle is the development of the 
individual. 

What, then, does the average American boy find 
in this country to give him a series of successive oppor- 
tunities to secure this personal development of mental 
and moral powers ? 

First, a public primary school and grammar school 
which will give him the rudiments of learning from 
his sixth to his fourteenth year. Then a public 
high school which will give him about what a French 
lycee gives from his fourteenth to his eighteenth year. 
He is now ready to enter the higher education. Up 
to this point, if he fives in a town of any considerable 
size, he has not been obliged to go away from home. 
Many of the smaller places of three or four thousand 
inhabitants have good high schools. If he lives in the 
country, he may have had to go to the nearest city or 
large town for his high school or academy. 

208 



i 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Beyond this point, he finds either a college, as it is 
called in America, or the collegiate department in one 
of the universities, which will give him a four years' 
course of general study. Before he can begin this, 
he must pass what is called an entrance examination, 
which is practically uniform in all the better institu- 
tions, and almost, but perhaps not quite, equivalent 
to the examination in France for the degree of hadie- 
Her. Thus a certain standard of preparation is set 
for all the secondary schools. It is at the end of his 
general course in literature, science, and philosophy 
that the American student gets his bachelor's de- 
gree, which corresponds pretty nearly to the French 
degree of licencie in letters and sciences. 

Now the student, a young man of about twenty-one 
or twenty-two years, is supposed to be prepared, 
either to go into the world as a fairly well-educated 
citizen, or to continue his studies for a professional 
career. He finds the graduate schools of the uni- 
versities ready to give him courses which lead to the 
degree of M.A. or Ph.D., and prepare him for the 
higher kind of teaching. The schools of law and 
medicine and engineering offer courses of from two 
to four years with a degree of LL.B. or M.D. or C.E. 
or M.E. at the end of them. The theological semi- 
naries are ready to instruct him for the service of the 
church in a course of three or four years. 

By this time he is twenty-four or twenty-five years 
p 209 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

old. Unless he has special ambitions which lead him 
to study abroad, or to take up original research at 
Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, or some 
other specially equipped university, he is now ready 
for practical work. The American theory is that he 
should go to work and get the rest of his education 
in practice. 

Of course there have been short cuts and irregular 
paths open to him all along the way, — a short cut 
from the high school to the technical school, — a 
short cut into law or medicine by the way of private 
preparation for the examination, which in some 
States is absurdly low. But these short cuts are 
being closed up very rapidly. It is growing more and 
more difficult to get into a first-class professional 
school without a collegiate or university degree. 
Already, if the American student wants system and 
regularity, he can get a closely articulated course, 
fitted to his individual needs, from the primary school 
up to the door of his profession. 

But the real value of that course depends upon 
two things that are beyond the power of any system 
to insure — the personal energy that he brings to his 
work, and the personal power of the "professors under 
whom he studies. I suppose the same thing is true 
in France as in America. Neither here nor there can 
you find equality of results. All you have a right to 
expect is equality of opportunity. 

2IO 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

II. The great symbol and instrument of this idea 
of equal opportunity in the United States is the com- 
mon school. In every State of the Union provision 
is made for the education of the children at public 
expense. The extent and quality of this education, 
the methods of control, the standards of equipment, 
even the matter of compulsory or voluntary attend- 
ance, vary in different States and communities. 
But, as a rule, you may say that it puts vi^ithin the 
reach of every boy and girl free instruction from the 
a-b-c up to the final grade of a lycee. 

The money expended by the States on these 
common schools in 1905-1906 was $307,765,000, — 
more than one-third of the annual expenditure of the 
national government for all purposes, more than 
twice as much as the State governments spent for 
all other purposes. This sum, you understand, was 
raised by direct, local taxation. Neither the import 
duties nor the internal revenue contributed anything 
to it. It came directly from the citizen's pocket, at 
the rate of $3.66 a year per capita, or nearly $13 a 
year for every grown-up man. 

How many children were benefited by it? Who 
can tell? 16,600,000 boys and girls were enrolled in 
the public schools (that is to say, more than 70 per 
cent of the whole number of children between five 
and eighteen years of age, and about 20 per cent of 
the total population). The teachers employed were 

211 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

109,000 men, 356,000 women. The average daily 
expenditure for each pupil was 17 cents; the average 
annual expenditure, about $25. 

In addition to this number there are at least 1,500,- 
000 children in privately endowed and supported 
schools, secular or religious. The Catholic Church 
has a system of parochial schools which is said to 
provide for about a million children. Many of the 
larger Protestant Churches support high schools and 
academies of excellent quality. Some of the most 
famous secondary schools, like Phillips Exeter and 
Andover, St. Paul's, the Hill School, Lawrenceville 
School, are private foundations well endowed. 

These figures do not mean much to the imagi- 
nation. Statistics are lilvc grapes in their skins. 
You have to put a pressure upon them to extract any 
wine. Observe, then, that if you walked through an 
American town between eight and nine in the morn- 
ing, and passed a thousand people indoors and out, 
more than two hundred of them would be children 
going to school. Perhaps twenty of these children 
would turn in at private schools, or church schools. 
But nine-tenths of the little crowd would be on their 
way to the public schools. The great majority of 
the children would be under fourteen years of age; 
for only about one child out of every twenty goes be- 
yond that point in schooling. Among the younger 
children the boys would outnumber the girls a 



i 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

little. But in the small group of high-school children 
there would be three girls to two boys, because the 
boys have to go to work earlier to earn a living. 

Suppose you followed one of these groups of chil- 
dren into the school, what would you find? That 
would depend entirely upon local circumstances. 
You might find a splendid building with modern 
fittings; you might find an old-fashioned building, 
overcrowded and ill-fitted. Each State, as I have 
said before, has its own common-school system. 
And not only so, but within the State there are smaller 
units of organization — the county, the township, the 
school district. Each of these may have its own 
school board, conservative or progressive, generous 
or stingy, and the quality and equipment of the 
schools will vary accordingly. They represent pretty 
accurately the general enlightenment and moral 
tone of the community. 

Wealth has something to do with it, of course. 
People cannot spend money unless they have it. 
The public treasury is not a Fortunatus' purse which 
fills itself. In the remote country districts, the little 
red schoolhouse, with its single room, its wooden 
benches, its iron stove, its unpainted flagstaff, stands 
on some hill-top without a tree to shadow it, in brave, 
unblushing poverty. In the richer cities there are 
common school palaces with an aspect of splendour 
which is almost disconcerting. 

213 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

Yet it is not altogether a question of wealth. It is 
also a question of public spirit. Baltimore is nearly 
as large and half as rich as Boston, yet Boston spends 
about three times as much on her schools. Rich- 
mond has about the same amount of taxable property 
as Rochester, N.Y., yet Richmond spends only one- 
quarter as much on her schools. Houston, Texas; 
Wilmington, Delaware; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; 
Trenton, New Jersey ; New Bedford, Massachusetts ; 
and Des Moines, Iowa, are six cities with a population 
of from 80,000 to 100,000 each, and not far apart in 
wealth. But their public-school bills in 1906 varied 
as follows: Des Moines, $492,000; New Bedford, 
$472,000; Harrisburg, $304,000; Trenton, $300,- 
000; Wilmington, $226,000; and Houston, the 
richest of the six, $163,000. 

If you should judge from this that the public 
schools are most liberally supported in the North 
Atlantic, North Central, and Far Western States, 
you would be right. The amount that is con- 
tributed to the common schools per adult male in- 
habitant is largest in the following States in order: 
Utah, $22; North Dakota, $21; New York, $20; 
Colorado, $20; Massachusetts, $19; South Dakota, 
$19; Nebraska, $17; and Pennsylvania, $16. The 
comparative weakness of the common schools in the 
South Atlantic and South Central States has led to the 
giving of large sums of money by private benevolence, 

214 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

the Peabody Fund, the Slater Fund, the Southern 
Education Fund, which are administered by boards 
of trustees for the promotion of education in 
these backward regions. The Spirit of America 
strongly desires to spread, to improve, to equalize 
and coordinate, the public schools of the whole 
country. 

Is it succeeding? What lines is it following? 
Where are the changes most apparent? 

First of all, there is a marked advance in the physi- 
cal equipment of the common school. In the villages 
and in the rural districts the new buildings are larger 
and more commodious than the old ones. In many 
parts of the country the method of concentration is 
employed. Instead of half a dozen poor little school- 
houses scattered over the hills, one good house is built 
in a central location, and the children are gathered 
from the farmhouses by school omnibuses or by 
the electric trolley-cars. Massachusetts made a law 
in 1894 requiring every township which did not have 
a high school to pay the transportation expenses of all 
qualified pupils who wished to attend the high schools 
of neighbouring towns. 

In many States text-books are provided at the 
public cost. In the cities the increased attention to 
the physical side of things is even more noticeable. 
No expense is spared to make the new buildings 
attractive and convenient. Libraries and laboratories, 

21S 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

gymnasiums and toilet-rooms, are provided. In some 
cities a free lunch is given to the pupils. 

The school furniture is of the latest and most 
approved pattern. The old idea of the adjustable 
child who could be fitted to any kind of a seat or desk, 
has given way to the new idea of the adjustable seat 
and desk which can be fitted to any kind of a child. 
School doctors are employed to make a physical ex- 
amination of the children. In a few cities there are 
school nurses to attend to the pupils who are slightly 
ailing. 

Physical culture, in the form of calisthenics, mili- 
tary drill, gynmastics, is introduced. Athletic organi- 
zations, foot-ball clubs, base-ball clubs, are encour- 
aged among the boys. In every way the effort is 
apparent to make school life attractive, more com- 
fortable, more healthful. 

Some critics say that the effort is excessive, that it 
spoils and softens the children, that it has distracted 
their attention from the serious business of hard study. 
I do not know. It is difficult for a man to remember 
just how serious he was when he was a boy. Perhaps 
the modern common-school pupil is less Spartan 
and resolute than his father used to be. Perhaps 
not. Pictures on the wall and flowers in the window, 
gymnastics and music, may not really distract the 
attention more than uncomfortable seats and bad 
ventilation. 

216 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Another marked tendency in the American com- 
mon school, at least in the large towns and cities, 
is the warm, one might almost say feverish, interest 
in new courses and methods of study. In the pri- 
mary schools this shows itself chiefly in the introduc- 
tion of new ways of learning to spell and to cipher. 
The alphabet and the multiplication table are no 
longer regarded as necessities. The phonetic pupil 
is almost in danger of supposing that reading, writing, 
and arithmetic are literally "the three f's." Hours 
are given to nature-study, object-lessons, hygiene. 
Children of tender years are instructed in the mys- 
teries of the digestive system. The range of mental 
effort is immensely diversified. 

In the high schools the increase of educational 
novelties is even more apparent. The courses are 
multiplied and divided. Elective studies are offered 
in large quantity. I take an example from the pro- 
gramme of a Western high school. The studies 
required of all pupils are: English, history, algebra, 
plane geometry, biology, physics, and Shakespeare. 
The studies offered for a choice are : psychology, ethics, 
commercial law, civics, economics, arithmetic, book- 
keeping, higher algebra, solid geometry, trigonometry, 
penmanship, phonography, drawing and the history 
of art, chemistry, Latin, German, French, Spanish, 
and Greek. This is quite a rich intellectual bill of 
fare for boys and girls between fourteen and eighteen 

217 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

years old. It seems almost encyclopaedic, — though 
I miss a few subjects like Sanskrit, Egyptology, 
photography, and comparative religions. 

The fact is that in the American high schools, 
as in the French lycees, the effort to enlarge and 
vary the curriculum by introducing studies which are 
said to be "urgently required by modern conditions" 
has led to considerable confusion of educational 
ideals. But with us, while the extremes are worse, 
owing to the lack of the central control, the disorder 
is less universal, because the conservative schools 
have been free to adhere to a simpler programme. It 
is a good thing, no doubt, that the rigidity of the old 
system, which made every pupil go through the same 
course of classics and mathematics, has been relaxed. 
But our danger now lies in the direction of using our 
schools to fit boys and girls to make a living, rather 
than to train them in a sound and vigorous intellectual 
life. For this latter purpose it is not true that all 
branches of study are of equal value. Some are 
immensely superior. We want not the widest range, 
but the best selection. 

There are some points in which the public schools 
of America, so far as one can judge from the general 
reports, are inferior to those of France. One of 
these points, naturally, is in the smooth working that 
comes from uniformity and coordination. Another 
point, strangely enough, is in the careful provision 

218 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

for moral instruction in the primary schools. At least 
in the programmes of the French schools, much more 
time and attention are given to this than in the 
American programmes. 

Another point of inferiority in the United States is 
in the requirement of proper preparation and certifi- 
cation of all teachers; and still another is in the 
security of their tenure of office and the length of 
their service in the profession. The teaching force 
of the American schools is a noble army; but it 
would be more efdficient if the regular element were 
larger in proportion to the volunteers. The person- 
nel changes too often. 

One reason for this, no doubt, is the fact that the 
women outnumber the men by three to one. Not 
that the women are poorer teachers. Often, espe- 
cially in primary work, they are the best. But their 
average term of professional service is not over four 
years. They are interrupted by that great accident, 
matrimony, which invites a woman to stop teaching, 
and a man to continue. 

The shortage of male teachers, which exists in so 
many countries, is felt in extreme form in the United 
States. Efforts are made to remedy it by the increase 
of normal schools and teachers' colleges, and by a 
closer connection between the universities and the 
public-school system. 

In the conduct and development of the common 
219 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

schools we see the same voluntary, experimental, 
pragmatic way of doing things that is so characteristic 
of the Spirit of America in every department of life. 
"Education," say the Americans, "is desirable, 
profitable, and necessary. The best way for us to get 
it is to work it out for ourselves. It must be practi- 
cally adapted to the local conditions of each commu- 
nity, and to the personal needs of the individual. The 
being of the child must be the centre of development. 
What we want to do is to make good citizens for 
American purposes. Liberty must be the foundation, 
unity the superstructure." 

This, upon the whole, is what the common schools 
are doing for the United States : Three-fourths of the 
children of the country (boys and girls studying to- 
gether from their sixth to their eighteenth year) are 
in them. They are immensely democratic. They 
are stronger in awakening the mind than in train- 
ing it. They do more to stimulate quick perception 
than to cultivate sound judgment and correct taste. 
Their principles are always good, their manners some- 
times. Universal knowledge is their foible; activity 
is their temperament ; energy and sincerity are their 
virtues ; superficiality is their defect. 

Candour compels me to add one more touch to 
this thumb-nail sketch of the American common 
school. The children of the rich, the socially promi- 
nent, the higher classes, if you choose to call them so, 

220 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

are not generally found in the public schools. At 
least in the East and the South, most of these children 
are educated in private schools and academies. 

One cause of this is mere fashion. But there are 
two other causes which may possibly deserve to be 
called reasons, good or bad. 

The first is the fear that coeducation, instead of 
making the boys refined and the girls hardy, as it is 
claimed, may effeminate the boys and roughen the girls. 

The second is the wish to secure more thorough 
and personal teaching in smaller classes. This the 
private schools offer, usually at a high price. In the 
older universities and colleges, a considerable part, 
if not the larger number, of the student body, comes 
from private preparatory schools and academies. 
Yet it must be noted that of the men who take high 
honours in scholarship a steadily increasing number, 
already a majority, are graduates of the free public 
high schools. 

This proves what ? That the State can give the 
best if it wants to. That it is much more likely to 
want to do so if it is enlightened, stimulated, and 
guided by the voluntary effort of the more intelligent 
part of the community. 

III. This brings me to the last division of the 
large subject around which I have been hastily cir- 
cling : the institutions of higher education, — univer- 
sities, colleges, and technological schools. Remem- 

221 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

ber that in America these different names are used 
with bewildering freedom. They are not definitions, 
nor even descriptions; they are simply ''tags." A 
school of arts and trades, a school of modern lan- 
guages, may call itself a university. An institution 
of liberal studies, with professional departments and 
graduate schools attached to it, may call itself a 
college. The size and splendour of the label does not 
determine the value of the wine in the bottle. The 
significance of an academic degree in America depends 
not on the name, but on the quality, of the institution 
that confers it. 

But, generally speaking, you may understand that a 
college is an institution which gives a four years' course 
in liberal arts and sciences, for which four years of 
academic preparation are required : a university adds 
to thiS; graduate courses, and one or more professional 
schools of law, medicine, engineering, divinity, or 
pedagogy; a technological school is one in which 
the higher branches of the applied arts and sciences 
are the chief subjects of study and in which only 
scientific degrees are conferred. 

Of these three kinds of institutions, 622 reported 
to the United States Bureau of Education in 1906: 
158 were for men only; 129 were for women only; 
335 were coeducational. The number of professors 
and instructors was 24,000. The number of under- 
graduate and resident graduate students was 136,000. 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

The income of these institutions for the year was 
$40,000,000, of which a little less than half came 
from tuition fees, and a little more than half 
from gifts and endowments. The value of the real 
estate and equipment was about $280,000,000, and 
the invested funds for endowment amounted to 
$236,000,000. 

These are large figures. But they do not convey 
any very definite idea to the mind, until we begin to 
investigate them and ask what they mean. How 
did this enormous enterprise of higher education 
come into being? Who supports it? What is it 
doing? 

There are three ways in which the colleges and 
universities of America have originated. They 
have been founded by the churches to "provide a 
learned and godly ministry, and to promote knowl- 
edge and sound intelligence in the community." 
They have been endowed by private and personal 
gifts and benefactions. They have been established 
by States, and in a few cases by cities, to complete 
and crown the comm.on-school system. 

But note that in the course of time important 
changes have occurred. Most of the older and 
larger universities which were at first practically sup- 
ported and controlled by churches, have now become 
independent and are maintained by non-sectarian 
support. The institutions which remain under con- 

223 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

trol of churches are the smaller colleges, the majority 
of which were established between iSio and 1870. 

The universities established by a large gift or 
bequest from a single person, of which Johns Hopkins 
in Maryland, Leland Stanford in California, and 
Chicago University founded by the head of the 
Standard Oil Company, may be taken as examples, 
are of comparatively recent origin. Their imme- 
diate command of large wealth has enabled them 
to do immense things quickly. Chicago is called by 
a recent writer "a University by enchantment." 

In the foundation of State universities the South 
pointed the way with the Universities of Tennessee, 
North Carolina, and Georgia, at the end of the eigh- 
teenth century. But since that time the West has 
distinctly taken the lead. Out of the twenty-nine 
colleges and universities which report an enrolment 
of over a thousand undergraduate and graduate 
students, sixteen are State institutions, and fourteen 
of these are west of the AUeghanies. 

It is in these State universities, especially in the 
Middle West, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, 
Minnesota, Iowa, that you will see the most remark- 
able illustration of that thirst for knowledge, that 
ambition for personal development, which is charac- 
teristic of the Spirit of Young America. 

The thousands of sons and daughters of farmers, 
mechanics, and tradesmen, who flock to these institu- 

224 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

tions, are full of eagerness and hope. They are no 
respecters of persons, but they have a tremendous 
faith in the power of education. They all expect to 
succeed in getting it, and to succeed in life by means 
of it. They are alert, inquisitive, energetic ; in their 
work strenuous, and in their play enthusiastic. 
They diffuse around them an atmosphere of joyous en- 
deavour, — a nervous, electric, rude, and bracing air. 
They seem irreverent ; but for the most part they are 
only intensely earnest and direct. They pursue their 
private aim with intensity. They "want to know." 
They may not be quite sure what it is that they want 
to know. But they have no doubt that knowledge 
is an excellent thing, and they ha^'e come to the uni- 
versity to get it. This strong desire to learn, this 
attitude of concentrated attack upon the secrets of 
the universe, seems to me less noticeable among the 
students of the older colleges of the East than it is in 
these new big institutions of the Centre. 

The State universities which have developed it, 
or grown up to meet it, are in many cases wonder- 
fully well organized and equipped. Professors of 
high standing have been brought from the Eastern 
colleges and from Europe. The main stress, perhaps, 
is laid upon practical results, and the technique of 
industry. Studies which are supposed to be directly 
utilitarian take the precedence over those which are 
regarded as merely disciplinary. But in the best of 
Q 225 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

these institutions the idea of general culture is main- 
tained. 

The University of Michigan, which is the oldest and 
the largest of these western State universities, still 
keeps its primacy with 4280 students drawn from 
48 States and Territories. But the Universities of 
Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and Illinois, and Cali- 
fornia are not unworthy rivals. 

A member of the British Commission which came 
to study education in the United States four years ago 
gave his judgment that the University of Wisconsin 
was the foremost in America. Why? "Because," 
said he, "it is a wholesome product of a common- 
wealth of three millions of people; sane, industrial, 
and progressive. It knits together the professions 
and labours; it makes the fine arts and the anvil 
one." 

That is a characteristic modern opinion, coming, 
mark you, not from an American, but from an Eng- 
lishman. It reminds me of the advice which an old 
judge gave to a young friend who had just been 
raised to the judicial bench. "Never give reasons," 
said he, " for your decisions. The decision may often 
be right, but the reasons will probably be wrong." 

A thoughtful critic would say that the union of " the 
fine arts and the anvil" was not a sufficient ground 
for awarding the primacy to a university. Its stand- 
ing must be measured in its own sphere, — the realm 

226 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

of knowledge and wisdom. It exists for the dis- 
interested pursuit of truth, for the development of the 
intellectual life, and for the rounded development of 
character. Its primary aim is not to fit men for any 
specific industry, but to give them those things which 
are everywhere essential to intelligent living. Its at- 
tention must be fixed not on the work, but on the man. 
In him, as a person, it must seek to develop four 
powers — the power to see clearly, the power to 
imagine vividly, the power to think independently, 
and the power to will wisely and nobly. This is the 
university ideal which a conservative critic would 
maintain against the utilitarian theory. He might 
admire the University of Wisconsin greatly, but it 
would be for other reasons than those which the 
Englishman gave. 

"After all," this conservative would say, "the 
older American universities are still the most impor- 
tant factors in the higher education of the country. 
They have the traditions. They set the standard. 
You cannot understand education in England without 
going to Oxford and Cambridge, nor in America 
without going to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and 
Columbia." 

Perhaps the conservative would be right. At all 
events, I wish that I could help the friendly foreign 
observer to understand just what these older institu- 
tions of learning, and some others like them, have 
227 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

meant and still mean to Americans. They are the 
monuments of the devotion of our fathers to ideal 
aims. They are the landmarks of the intellectual 
life of the young republic. Time has changed them, 
but it has not removed them. They still define 
a region within which the making of a reasonable 
man is the main interest, and truth is sought and 
served for her own sake. 

Originally, these older universities were almost 
identical in form. They were called colleges and 
based upon the idea of a uniform four years' course 
consisting mainly of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, 
with an addition of history, philosophy, and natural 
science in the last two years, and leading to the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts. This was supposed to be 
the way to make a reasonable man. 

But in the course of time the desire to seek truth 
in other regions, by other paths, led to a gradual 
enlargement and finally to an immense expansion of 
the curriculum. The department of letters was 
opened to receive English and other modern lan- 
guages. The department of philosophy branched out 
into economics and civics and experimental psychol- 
ogy. History took notice of the fact that much has 
happened since the fall of the Roman Empire. 
Science threw wide its doors to receive the new 
methods and discoveries of the nineteenth century. 
The elective system of study came in like a flood from 

228 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Germany. The old-fashioned curriculum was sub- 
merged and dissolved. The four senior colleges 
came out as universities and began to differentiate 
themselves. 

Harvard, under the bold leadership of President 
Eliot, went first and farthest in the development of 
the elective system. One of its own graduates, Mr. 
John Corbin, has recently written of it as "a Ger- 
manized university." It offers to its students free 
choice among a multitude of courses so great that 
it is said that one man could hardly take them all 
in two hundred years. There is only one course 
which every undergraduate is required to take, — 
English composition in the Freshman year: 551 
distinct courses are presented by the Faculty of Arts 
and Sciences. In the whole university there are 
556 officers of instruction and 4000 students. There 
is no other institution in America which provides 
such a rich, varied, and free chance for the individ- 
ual to develop his intellectual life. 

Princeton, so far as the elective system is concerned, 
represents the other extreme. President McCosh in- 
troduced it with Scotch caution and reserve, in 1875. 
It hardly went beyond the liberalizing of the last 
two years of study. Other enlargements followed. 
But at heart Princeton remained conservative. 
It liked regularity, uniformity, system, more than it 
liked freedom and variety. In recent years it has 

229 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

rearranged the electives in groups, which compel a 
certain amount of unity in the main direction of a 
student's effort. It has introduced a system of pre- 
ceptors or tutors who take personal charge of each 
student in his reading and extra class-room work. 
The picked men of the classes, who have won prizes, 
or scholarships, or fellowships, go on with higher uni- 
versity work in the graduate school. The divinity 
school is academically independent, though closely 
allied. There are no other professional schools. 
Thus Princeton is distinctly "a collegiate university," 
with a very definite idea of what a liberal education 
ought to include, and a fixed purpose of developing 
the individual by leading him through a regulated in- 
tellectual discipline. 

Yale, the second in age of the American universities, 
occupies a middle ground, and fills it with immense 
vigour. Very slow in yielding to the elective system, 
Yale theoretically adopted it four years ago in its 
extreme form. But in practice the "Yale Spirit" 
preserves the unity of each class from entrance to 
graduation; the "average man" is much more of a 
controlling factor than he is at Harvard, and the solid 
body of students in the Department of Arts and 
Sciences gives tone to the whole university. Yale 
is typically American in its love of liberty and its 
faculty of self-organization. It draws its support 
from a wider range of country than either Harvard or 

230 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

Princeton. It hasnot been a leader in the production 
of advanced ideas or educational methods. Origi- 
nality is not its mark. Efficiency is. No other 
American university has done more in giving men 
of light and leading to industrial, professional, and 
public life in the United States. 

Columbia, by its location in the largest of the Amer- 
ican cities, and by the direction which its last three 
presidents have given to its policy, has become much 
stronger in its professional schools and its advanced 
graduate work, than in its undergraduate college. 
Its schools of mines and law and medicine are famous. 
In its graduate courses it has as many students 
enrolled as Harvard, Yale, and Michigan put to- 
gether. It has a library of 450,000 volumes, and 
endowment for various kinds of special study, in- 
cluding Chinese and journalism. 

None of these four universities is coeducational in 
the department of arts and sciences. But Harvard 
and Columbia each have an annex for women, — 
Radcliffe College and Barnard College, — in which 
the university professors lecture and teach. 

In Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and most of the older 
colleges, except those which are situated in the great 
cities, there is a common life of the students which 
is peculiar, I believe, to America, and highly character- 
istic and interesting. They reside together in large 
halls or dormitories grouped in an academic estate 

231 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

which is almost always beautiful with ancient trees 
and spacious lawns. There is nothing like the caste 
division among them which is permitted, if not 
fostered, at Oxford and Cambridge by the existence 
of distinct colleges in the same university. They be- 
long to the same social body, a community of youth 
bound together for a happy interval of four years 
between the strict discipline of school and the sepa- 
rating pressure of life in the outer world. They 
have their own customs and traditions, often absurd, 
always picturesque and amusing. They have their 
own interests, chief among which is the cultivation 
of warm friendships among men of the same age. 
They organize their own clubs and societies, athletic, 
musical, literary, dramatic, or purely social, accord- 
ing to elective affinity. But the class spirit creates 
a ground of unity for all who enter and graduate 
together, and the college spirit makes a common tie 
for all. 

It is a little world by itself, — this American 
college life, — incredibly free, yet on the whole 
self-controlled and morally sound, — physically ac- 
tive and joyful, yet at bottom full of serious purpose. 
See the students on the athletic field at some great 
foot-ball or base-ball match; hear their volleying 
cheers, their ringing songs of encouragement or 
victory; watch their waving colours, their eager 
faces, their movements of excitement as the fortune 

232 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

of the game shifts and changes; and you might 
think that these young men cared for nothing 
but out-of-door sport. But that noisy enthusiasm 
is the natural overflow of youthful spirits. The 
athletic game gives it the easiest outlet, the simplest 
opportunity to express college loyalty by an outward 
sign, a shout, a cheer, a song. Follow the same men 
from day to day, from week to week, and you 
will find that the majority of them, even among the 
athletes, know that the central object of their college 
life is to get an education. But they will tell you, 
also, that this education does not come only from the 
lecture-room, the class, the library. An indispensable 
and vital part of it comes from their daily contact with 
one another in play and work and comradeship, — 
from the chance which college gives them to know, 
and estimate, and choose, their friends among their 
fellows. 

It is intensely democratic, — this American college 
life, — and therefore it has distinctions, as every real 
democracy must. But they are not artificial and con- 
ventional. They are based in the main upon what a 
man is and does, what contribution he makes to the 
honour and joy and fellowship of the community. 

The entrance of the son of a millionnaire, of a high 
official, of a famous man, is noted, of course. But it is 
noted only as a curious fact of natural history which 
has no bearing upon the college world. The real 

233 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

question is, What kind of a fellow is the new man ? 
Is he a good companion ; has he the power of leader- 
ship; can he do anything particularly well ; is he a 
vigorous and friendly person ? Wealth and parental 
fame do not count, except perhaps as slight hin- 
drances, because of the subconscious jealousy which 
they arouse in a community where the majority do not 
possess them. Poverty does not count at all, unless 
it makes the man himself proud and shy, or confines 
him so closely to the work of self-support that he has 
no time to mix with the crowd. Men who are work- 
ing their own way through college are often the 
leaders in popularity and influence. 

I do not say that there are no social distinctions in 
American college life. There, as in the great world, 
little groups of men are drawn together by expensive 
tastes and amusements; little coteries are formed 
which aim at exclusiveness. But these are of no real 
account in the student body. It lives in a brisk and 
wholesome air of free competition in study and sport, 
of free intercourse on a human basis. 

It is this tone of humanity, of sincerity, of joyful 
contact with reality, in student life, that makes the 
American graduate love his college with a sentiment 
which must seem to foreigners almost like sentimen- 
tality. His memory holds her as the Alma Mater of 
his happiest years. He goes back to visit her halls, 
her playgrounds, her shady walks, year after year, as 

234 



DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 

one returns to a shrine of the heart. He sings the 
college songs, he joins in the college cheers, with an 
enthusiasm which does not die as his voice loses the 
ring of youth. And when gray hairs come upon him, 
he still walks with his class among the old graduates 
at the head of the commencement procession. It is 
all a little strange, a little absurd, perhaps, to one who 
watches it critically, from the outside. But to the 
man himself it is simply a natural tribute to the good 
and wholesome memory of American college life. 

But what are its results from the educational point 
of view ? What do these colleges and universities do 
for the intellectual life of the country? Doubtless 
they are still far from perfect in method and achieve- 
ment. Doubtless they let many students pass 
through them without acquiring mental thoroughness, 
philosophical balance, fine culture. Doubtless they 
need to advance in the standard of teaching, the 
strictness of examination, the encouragement of re- 
search. They have much to learn. They are 
learning. 

Great central institutions like those which Mr. 
Carnegie has endowed for the Promotion of Research 
and for the Advancement of Teaching will help 
progress. Conservative experiments and liberal ex- 
periments will lead to better knowledge. 

But whatever changes are made, whatever improve- 
ments arrive in the higher education in America, 

235 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

one thing I hope will never be given up, — the free, 
democratic, united student life of our colleges and 
universities. For without this factor we cannot 
develop the kind of intellectual person who will be at 
home in the republic. The world in which he has to 
live will not ask him what degrees he has taken. 
It will ask him simply what he is, and what he can do. 
If he is to be a leader in a country where the people are 
sovereign, he must add to the power to see clearly, 
to imagine vividly, to think independently, and to will 
wisely, the faculty of knowing other men as they are, 
and of working with them for what they ought to be. 
And one of the best places to get this faculty is in the 
student life of an American college. 



236 



VII 

SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 



VII 

SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

All human activity is, in a certain sense, a mode 
of self-expression. The works of man in the organi- 
zation of the State, in the development of industry, 
in voluntary effort for the improvement of the com- 
mon order, are an utterance of his inner life. 

But it is natural for him to seek a fuller, clearer, 
more conscious mode of self-expression, to speak 
more directly of his ideals, thoughts, and feelings. 
It is this direct utterance of the Spirit of America, 
as it is found in literature, which I propose now, 
and in the following lectures,* to discuss. 

Around the political and ecclesiastical and social 
structures which men build for themselves there are 
always flowing great tides and currents of human 
speech ; like the discussions in the studio of the archi- 
tect, the confused murmur of talk among the work- 
men, the curious and wondering comments of the 
passing crowd, when some vast cathedral or palace 
or hall of industry is rising from the silent earth. 

* The lectures which followed, at the Sorbonne, on Irving, 
Cooper, Bryant, Poe, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whittier, Emer- 
son, Lowell, Whitman, and Present Tendencies in American Lit- 
erature, are not included in this volume. 

239 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

Man is a talking animal. The daily debates of the 
forum and the market-place, the orations and lec- 
tures of a thousand platforms, the sermons and ex- 
hortations of the thousand pulpits, the ceaseless 
conversation of the street and the fireside, all confess 
that one of the deepest of human appetites and pas- 
sions is for self-expression and intercourse, to reveal 
and to communicate the hidden motions of the spirit 
that is in man. 

Language, said a cynic, is chiefly useful to conceal 
thought. But that is only a late-discovered, minor, 
and decadent use of speech. If concealment had 
been the first and chief need that man felt, he never 
would have made a language. He would have re- 
mained silent. He would have lived among the 
trees, contented with that inarticulate chatter which 
still keeps the thoughts of monkeys (if they have 
any) so well concealed. 

But vastly the greater part of human effort toward 
self-expression serves only the need of the transient 
individual, the passing hour. It sounds incessantly 
beneath the silent stars, — this murmur, this roar, 
this susurrus of mingled voices, — and melts con- 
tinually into the vague inane. The idle talk of the 
multitude, the eloquence of golden tongues, the shouts 
of brazen throats, go by and are forgotten, like the 
wind that passes through the rustling leaves of the 
forest. 

240 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

In the fine arts man has invented not only a more 
perfect and sensitive, but also a more enduring, form 
for the expression of that which fills his spirit with 
the Joy and wonder of living. His sense of beauty 
and order; the response of something within him 
to certain aspects of nature, certain events of life; 
his interpretation of the vague and mysterious things 
about him which seem to suggest a secret meaning; 
his delight in the intensity and clearness of single 
impressions, in the symmetry and proportion of 
related objects; his double desire to surpass nature, 
on the one side by the simplicity and unity of his 
work, or on the other side by the freedom of its range 
and the richness of its imagery; his sudden glimpses 
of truth; his persistent visions of virtue; his percep- 
tion of human misery and his hopes of human excel- 
lence; his deep thoughts and solemn dreams of the 
Divine, — all these he strives to embody, clearly or 
vaguely, by symbol, or allusion, or imitation, in 
painting and sculpture, music and architecture. 

The medium of these arts is physical ; they speak 
to the eye and the ear. But their ultimate appeal is 
spiritual, and the pleasure which they give goes far 
deeper than the outward senses. 

In literature we have another art whose very me- 
dium is more than half spiritual. For words are 
not like lines, or colours, or sounds. They are living 
creatures begotten in the soul of man. They come 

E 241 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

to us saturated with human meaning and association. 
They are vitally related to the emotions and thoughts 
out of which they have sprung. They have a wider 
range, a more delicate precision, a more direct and pen- 
etrating power than any other medium of expression. 

The art of literature which weaves these living 
threads into its fabric lies closer to the common 
life and rises higher into the ideal life than any other 
art. In the lyric, the drama, the epic, the romance, 
the fable, the conte, the essay, the history, the biog- 
raphy, it not only speaks to the present hour, but also 
leaves its record for the future. 

Literature consists of those writings which inter- 
pret the meanings of nature and life, in words of 
charm and power, touched with the personality of 
the author, in artistic forms of permanent interest. 

Out of the common utterances of men, the daily 
flood of language spoken and written, by which they 
express their thoughts and feelings, — out of that 
current of journalism and oratory, preaching and 
debate, literature comes. But with that current it 
does not pass away. Art has endowed it with the 
magic which confers a distinct life, a longer endur- 
ance, a so-called immortality. It is the ark on the 
flood. It is the light on the candlestick. It is the 
flower among the leaves, the consummation of the 
plant's vitality, the crown of its beauty, the treasure- 
house of its seeds. 

242 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

Races and nations have existed without a litera- 
ture. But their hfe has been dumb. With their 
death their power has departed. 

What does the world know of the thoughts and 
feelings of those unlettered tribes of white and black 
and yellow and red, flitting in ghost-like pantomime 
across the background of the stage? Whatever 
message they may have had for us, of warning, of 
encouragement, of hope, of guidance, remains un- 
delivered. They are but phantoms, mysterious and 
ineffective. 

But with literature life arrives at utterance and 
lasting power. The Scythians, the Etruscans, the 
Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, have vanished into 
thin air. We grope among their ruined cities. We 
collect their figured pottery, their rusted coins and 
weapons. And we wonder what manner of men 
they were. But the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Ro- 
mans, still live. We know their thoughts and feel- 
ings, their loves and hates, their motives and ideals. 
They touch us and move us to-day through a vital 
literature. Nor should we fully understand their 
other arts, nor grasp the meaning of their political 
and social institutions without the light which is 
kindled within them by the ever-burning torch of 
letters. 

The Americans do not belong among the dumb 
races. Their spiritual descent is not from Etruria 

243 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

and Phoenicia and Carthage, nor from the silent red 
man of the western forests. Intellectually, like all 
the leading races of Europe, they inherit from Greece 
and Rome and Palestine. 

Their instinct of self-expression in the arts has been 
slower to assert itself than those other traits which 
we have been considering, — self-reliance, fair- 
play, common order, the desire of personal develop- 
ment. But they have taken part, and they still 
take part (not altogether inaudibly), in the general 
conversation and current debate of the world. More- 
over, they have begun to create a native literature 
which utters, to some extent at least, the thoughts 
and feelings of the soul of the people. 

This literature, considered in its ensemble as an 
expression of our country, raises some interesting 
questions which I should like to answer. Why 
has it been so slow to begin? Why is it not more 
recognizably American? What are the qualities 
in which it really expresses the Spirit of America ? 

I. If you ask me why a native literature has been 
so slow to begin in America, I answer, first, that it has 
not been slow at all. Compared with other races, 
the Americans have been rather less slow than the 
average in seeking self-expression in literary form 
and in producing books which have survived the 
generation which produced them. 

244 



S"C1.F-¥XPR£SSI0N AND LITERATURE 

How long was it, for example, before the Hebrews 
began to create a literature? A definite answer to 
that question would bring us into trouble with the 
theologians. But at least we may say that from 
the beginning of the Hebrew Commonwealth to the 
time of the prophet Samuel there were three centuries 
and a half without literature. 

How long did Rome exist before its literary activi- 
ties began ? Of course we do not know what books 
may have perished. But the first Romans whose 
names have kept a place in literature were Naevius 
and Ennius, who began to write more than five 
hundred years after the city was founded. 

Compared with these long periods of silence, the 
two hundred years between the settlement of America 
and the appearance of Washington Irving and James 
Fenimore Cooper seems but a short time. 

Even earlier than these writers I should be inclined 
to claim a place in literature for two Americans, 
— Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin. 
Indeed it is possible that the clean-cut philosophical 
essays of the iron-clad Edwards, and the intensely 
human autobiography of the shrewd and genial 
Franklin may continue to find critical admirers and 
real readers long after many writers, at present more 
praised, have been forgotten. 

But if you will allow me this preliminary protest 
against the superficial notion that the Americans 

245 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

have been remarkably backward in producing a 
national literature, I will make a concession to cur- 
rent and commonplace criticism by admitting that 
they were not as quick in turning to literary self- 
expression as might have been expected. They were 
not a mentally sluggish people. They were a race 
of idealists. They were fairly well educated. Why 
did they not go to work at once, with their intense 
energy, to produce a national literature on de- 
mand? 

One reason, perhaps, was that they had the good 
sense to perceive that a national literature never has 
been, and never can be, produced in this way. It is 
not made to order. It grows. 

Another reason, no doubt, was the fact that they 
already had more books than they had time to read. 
They were the inheritors of the literature of Europe. 
They had the classics and the old masters. Milton 
and Dryden and Locke wrote for them. Pope and 
Johnson, Defoe and Goldsmith, wrote for them. 
Cervantes and Le Sage wrote for them. Montes- 
quieu and Rousseau wrote for them. Richardson 
and Smollett and Fielding gave them a plenty of 
long-measure novels. Above all, they found an over- 
flowing supply of books of edification in the religious 
writings of Thomas Fuller, Richard Baxter, John 
Bunyan, Philip Doddridge, Matthew Henry, and 
other copious Puritans. There was no pressing 

246 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

need of mental food for the Americans. The sup- 
ply was equal to the demand. 

Another reason, possibly, was the fact that they 
did not have a new language, with all its words fresh 
and vivid from their origin in life, to develop and 
exploit. This was at once an advantage and a dis- 
advantage. 

English was not the mother-tongue of all the colo- 
nists. For two or three generations there was a con- 
fusion of speech in the middle settlements. It is 
recorded of a certain young Dutchwoman from New 
Amsterdam, travelling to the English province of 
Connecticut, that she was in danger of being tried for 
witchcraft because she spoke a diabolical tongue, 
evidently marking her as "a child of Satan." 

But this polyglot period passed away, and the 
people in general spoke 

" the tongue that Shakespeare spoke," — 
spoke it indeed rather more literally than the Eng- 
lish did, retaining old locutions like "I guess," and 
sprinkling their talk with "Sirs," and "Ma'ams," — 
which have since come to be considered as Ameri- 
canisms, whereas they are really Elizabethanisms. 

The possession of a language that is already con- 
solidated, organized, enriched with a vast vocabu- 
lary, and dignified by literary use, has two effects. 
It makes the joyful and unconscious literature of 
adolescence, the period of popular ballads and 

247 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

rhymed chronicles, quaint animal-epics and miracle- 
plays, impossible. It offers to the literature of ma- 
turity an instrument of expression equal to its needs. 

But such a language carries with it discourage- 
ments as well as invitations. It sets a high standard 
of excellence. It demands courage and strength to 
use it in any but an imitative way. 

Do not misunderstand me here. The Americans, 
since that blending of experience which made them 
one people, have never felt that the English language 
was strange or foreign to them. They did not adopt 
or borrow it. It was their own native tongue. They 
grew up in it. They contributed to it. It belonged 
to them. But perhaps they hesitated a little to use 
it freely and fearlessly and originally while they 
were still in a position of tutelage and dependence. 
Perhaps they waited for the consciousness that they 
were indeed grown up, — a consciousness which 
did not fully come until after the War of 1812. 
Perhaps they needed to feel the richness of their own 
experience, the vigour of their own inward life, before 
they could enter upon the literary use of that most 
rich and vigorous of modern languages. 

Another reason why American literature did not 
develop sooner was the absorption of the energy 
of the people in other tasks than writing. They 
had to chop down trees, to build houses, to plough 
prairies. It is one thing to explore the wilderness, 

248 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

as Chateaubriand did, an elegant visitor looking 
for the materials of romance. It is another thing to 
live in the wilderness and fight with it for a living. 
Real pioneers are sometimes poets at heart. But 
they seldom write their poetry. 

After the Americans had won their security and 
their daily bread in the wild country, they had still 
to make a State, to develop a social order, to pro- 
vide themselves with schools and churches, to do all 
kinds of things which demand time, and toil, and the 
sweat of the brow. It was a busy world. There 
was more work to be done than there were workmen 
to do it. Industry claimed every talent almost as 
soon as it got into breeches. 

A Franklin, who might have written essays or 
philosophical treatises in the manner of Diderot, 
must run a printing-press, invent stoves, pave streets, 
conduct a postal service, raise money for the War of 
Independence. A Freneau, who might have written 
lyrics in the manner of Andre Chdnier, must become 
a soldier, a sea-captain, an editor, a farmer. 

Even those talents which were drawn to the intel- 
lectual side of life were absorbed in the efforts which 
belong to the current discussions of affairs, the daily 
debate of the world, rather than to literature. They 
disputed, they argued, they exhorted, with a direct 
aim at practical results in morals and conduct. 
They became preachers, orators, politicians, pam- 

249 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

phleteers. They wrote a good deal ; but their writing 
has the effect of reported speech addressed to an 
audience. The mass of sermons, and political 
papers, and long letters on timely topics, which 
America produced in her first two hundred years 
is considerable. It contains much more vitality 
than the imitative essays, poems, and romances of 
the same period. 

John Dickinson's "Letters from a Pennsylvania 
Farmer," the sermons of President Witherspoon of 
Princeton, the papers of Madison, Hamilton, and 
Jay in the Federalist, are not bad reading, even 
to-day. They are virile and significant. They 
show that the Americans knew how to use the Eng- 
lish language in its eighteenth-century form. But 
they were produced to serve a practical purpose. 
Therefore they lack the final touch of that art whose 
primary aim is the pleasure of self-expression in 
forms as permanent and as perfect as may be found. 

II. The second question which I shall try to 
answer is this : Why is not the literature of America, 
not only in the beginning but also in its later devel- 
opment, more distinctly American? 

The answer is simple: It is distinctly American. 
But unfortunately the critics who are calling so per- 
sistently and looking so eagerly for "Americanism" 
in literature, do not recognize it when they see it. 

250 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

They are looking for something strange, eccentric, 
radical, and rude. When a real American like 
Franklin, or Irving, or Emerson, or Longfellow, or 
Lanier, or Howells appears, these critics will not 
believe that he is the genuine article. They expect 
something in the style of "Buffalo Bill," They 
imagine the Spirit of America always in a red shirt, 
strii)ed trousers, and rawhide boots. 

They recognize the Americanism of Washington 
when he crosses the forest to Fort Duquesne in his 
leather blouse and leggings. But when he appears 
at Mount Vernon in black velvet and lace ruffles, 
they say, "This is no American after all, but a trans- 
planted English squire," They acknowledge that 
Francis Parkman is an American when he follows 
the Oregon trail on horseback in hunter's dress. 
But when he sits in the tranquil library of his West 
Roxbury home surrounded by its rose gardens, they 
say, " This is no American, but a gentleman of Europe 
in exile." 

How often must our critics be reminded that the 
makers of America were not redskins nor amiable 
rufTians, but rather decent folk, with perhaps an ex- 
travagant admiration for order and respectability? 
When will they learn that the descendants of these 
people, when they come to write books, cannot be 
expected to show the qualities of barbarians and 
iconoclasts? How shall we persuade them to look 

251 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

at American literature not for the by-product of 
eccentricity, but for the self-expression of a sane and 
civilized people? I doubt whether it will ever be 
possible to effect this conversion and enlightenment ; 
for nothing is so strictly closed against criticism as 
the average critic's adherence to the point of view 
imposed by his own limitations. But it is a pity, 
in this case, that the point of view is not within sight 
of the facts. 

There is a story that the English poet Tennyson 
once said that he was glad that he had never met 
Longfellow, because he would not have liked to see 
the American poet put his feet upon the table. If 
the story is true, it is most laughable. For nothing 
could be more unlike the super-refined Longfellow 
than to put his feet in the wrong place, either on the 
table, or in his verse. Yet he was an American of 
the Americans, the literary idol of his country. 

It seems to me that the literature of America would 
be more recognizable if those who consider it from 
the outside knew more of the real spirit of the coun- 
try. If they were not always looking for volcanoes 
and earthquakes, they might learn to identify the 
actual features of the landscape. 

But when I have said this, honesty compels me to 
go a little further and admit that the full, complete 
life of America still lacks an adequate expression in 
literature. Perhaps it is too large and variegated 

252 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

in its outward forms, too simple in its individual 
types, and too complex in their combination, ever to 
find this perfect expression. Certainly we are still 
waiting for "the great American Novel." 

It may be that we shall have to wait a long time 
for this comprehensive and significant book which 
will compress into a single cup of fiction all the dif- 
ferent qualities of the Spirit of America, all the fer- 
menting elements that mingle in the vintage of the 
New World. But in this hope deferred, — if indeed 
it be a hope that can be reasonably entertained at 
all, — we are in no worse estate than the other com- 
plex modern nations. What English novel gives a 
perfect picture of all England in the nineteenth cen- 
tury? Which of the French romances of the last 
twenty years expresses the whole spirit of France? 

Meantime it is not difficult to find certain partial 
and local reflections of the inner and outer life of 
the real America in the literature, limited in amount 
though it be, which has already been produced in 
that country. In some of it the local quality of 
thought or language is so predominant as to act 
almost as a barrier to exportation. But there is a 
smaller quantity which may fairly be called "good 
anywhere"; and to us it is, and ought to be, doubly 
good because of its Americanism. 

Thus, for example, any reader who understands 
the tone and character of life in the Middle States, 

253 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

around New York and Philadelphia, in the first 
quarter of the nineteenth century, feels that the ideas 
and feelings of the more intelligent people, those who 
were capable of using or of appreciating literary 
forms, are well enough represented in the writings 
of the so-called "Knickerbocker School." 

Washington Irving, the genial humorist, the deli- 
cate and sympathetic essayist and story-teller of 
The Sketch-Book, was the first veritable "man of 
letters " in America. Cooper, the inexhaustible teller- 
-of -tales in the open air, the lover of brave adventure 
in the forest and on the sea, the Homer of the back- 
woodsman, and the idealist of the noble savage, was 
the discoverer of real romance in the New World. 

Including other writers of slighter and less spon- 
taneous talent, like Halleck, Drake, and Paulding, 
this school was marked by a cheerful and optimistic 
view of life, a tone of feeling more sentimental than 
impassioned, a friendly interest in humanity rather 
than an intense moral enthusiasm, and a flowing, 
easy style, — the manner of a company of people 
living in comfort and good order, people of social 
habits, good digestion, and settled opinions, who 
sought in literature more of entertainment and relaxa- 
tion than of inspiration or what the strenuous reform- 
ers call "uplift." 

After the days when its fashionable idol was Willis, 
and its honoured though slightly cold poet was Bry- 

254 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

ant, and its neglected and embittered genius was 
Edgar Allan Poe, this school, lacking the elements of 
inward coherence, passed into a period of decline. 
It revived again in such writers as George William 
Curtis, Donald Mitchell, Bayard Taylor, Charles 
Dudley Warner, Frank R. Stockton; and it con- 
tinues some of its qualities in the present-day writers 
whose centre is undoubtedly New York. 

Is it imaginary, or can I really feel some traces, here 
and there, of the same influences which affected the 
"Knickerbocker School" in such different writers as 
Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, in spite of 
their western origin? Certainly it can be felt in 
essayists like Hamilton Mabie and Edward S. Mar- 
tin and Brander Matthews, in novelists like Dr. 
Weir Mitchell and Hopkinson Smith, in poets like 
Aldrich and Stedman, and even in the later work of 
a native lyrist like Richard Watson Gilder. There 
is something, — I know not what, — a kind of ur- 
banum genus dicendi, which speaks of the great city 
in the background and of a tradition continued. 
Even in the work of such a cosmopolitan and relent- 
less novelist as Mrs. Wharton, or of such an inde- 
pendent and searching critic as Mr. Brownell, my 
mental palate catches a flavour of America and a 
reminiscence of New York; though now indeed 
there is little or nothing left of the Knickerbocker 
optimism and cheerful sentimentality. 

255 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

The American school of historians, including 
such writers as Ticknor, Prescott, Bancroft, Motley, 
and Parkman, represents the growing interest of the 
people of the New World for the history of the Old, 
as well as their desire to know more about their 
own origin and development. Motley's Rise of the 
Dutch Republic, Parkman's volumes on the French 
settlements in Canada, Sloane's Life of Napoleon, 
and Henry C. Lea's History of the Inquisition 
are not only distinguished works of scholarship, 
but also eminently readable and interesting expres- 
sions of the mind of a great republic consider- 
ing important events and institutions in other coun- 
tries to which its own history was closely related. 
The serious and laborious efforts of Bancroft to pro- 
duce a clear and complete History of the United 
States resulted in a work of great dignity and value. 
But much was left for others to do in the way of ex- 
ploring the sources of the nation, and in closer study 
of its critical epochs. This task has been well 
continued by such historians as John Fiske, Henry 
Adams, James Bach McMaster, John Codman 
Ropes, James Ford Rhodes, Justin Winsor, and 
Sydney G. Fisher. 

These are only some of the principal names which 
may be cited to show that few countries have better 
reason than the United States to be proud of a 
school of historians whose works are not only well 

256 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

documented, but also well written, and so entitled 
to be counted as literature. 

The Southern States, before the Civil War and 
for a little time after, were not largely represented 
in American letters. In prose they had a fluent 
romancer, Simms, who wrote somewhat in the man- 
ner of Cooper, but with less skill and force; an 
exquisite artist of the short-story and the lyric, Poe, 
who, although he was born in Boston and did most of 
his work in Philadelphia and New York, may per- 
haps be counted sympathetically with the South; 
two agreeable story-tellers, John Esten Cooke and 
John P. Kennedy ; two delicate and charming lyrists, 
Paul Hayne and Henry Timrod; and one greatly 
gifted poet, Sidney Lanier, whose career was cut 
short by a premature death. 

But the distinctive spirit of the South did not 
really find an adequate utterance in early American 
literature, and it is only of late years that it is begin- 
ning to do so. The fine and memorable stories of 
George W. Cable reflect the poesy and romance 
of the Creole life in Louisiana. James Lane Allen 
and Thomas Nelson Page express in their prose the 
Southern atmosphere and temperament. The poems 
of Madison Cawein are full of the bloom and fra- 
grance of Kentucky. Among the women who write, 
Alice Hegan Rice, "Charles Egbert Craddock," 
Ruth McEnery Stuart, "George Madden Martin," 
s 257 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

and Mary Johnston may be named as charming 
story-tellers of the South, Joel Chandler Harris 
has made the old negro folk-tales classic, in his 
Uncle Remus, — a work which belongs, if I mistake 
not, to one of the most enduring types of literature. 

But beyond a doubt the richest and finest flower- 
ing of helles lettres in the United States during the 
nineteenth century was that which has been called 
"the Renaissance of New England." The quicken- 
ing of moral and intellectual life which followed 
the unitarian movement in theology, the antislavery 
agitation in society, and the transcendental fermen- 
tation in philosophy may not have caused, but it 
certainly influenced, the development of a group of 
writers, just before the middle of the century, who 
brought a deeper and fuller note into American 
poetry and prose. 

Hawthorne, profound and lonely genius, dramatist 
of the inner life, master of the symbolic story, 
endowed with the double gift of deep insight and 
exquisite art; Emerson, herald of self-reliance and 
poet of the intuitions, whose prose and verse flash 
with gem-like thoughts and fancies, and whose 
calm, vigorous accents were potent to awaken and 
sustain the intellectual independence of America; 
Longfellow, the sweetest and the richest voice of 
American song, the household poet of the New 
World; Whittier, the Quaker bard, whose ballads 

258 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

and lyrics reflect so perfectly the scenery and the sen- 
timent of New England ; Holmes, genial and pungent 
wit, native humorist, with a deep spring of sympathy 
and a clear vein of poetry in his many-sided person- 
ality ; Lowell, generous poet of high and noble emo- 
tions, inimitable writer of dialect verse, penetrating 
critic and essayist, — these six authors form a group 
not yet equalled in the literary history of America. 

The factors of strength, and the hidden elements 
of beauty, in the Puritan character came to flower 
and fruit in these men. They were liberated, 
enlarged, quickened by the strange flood of poetry, 
philosophy, and romantic sentiment which flowed 
into the somewhat narrow and sombre enceinte of 
Yankee thought and life. They found around them 
a circle of eager and admiring readers who had 
felt the same influences. The circle grew wider and 
wider as the charm and power of these writers made 
itself felt, and as their ideas were diffused. Their 
work, always keeping a distinct New England colour, 
had in it a substance of thought and feeling, an 
excellence of form and texture, which gave it a much 
broader appeal. Their fame passed from the sec- 
tional to the national stage. In their day Boston 
was the literary centre of the United States. And 
in after days, though the sceptre has passed, the 
influence of these men may be traced in almost all 
American writers, of the East, the West, or the South, 

259 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

in every field of literature, except perhaps the region 
of realistic or romantic fiction. 

Here it seems as if the West had taken the lead. 
Bret Harte, with his frontier stories, always vivid 
but not always accurate, was the founder of a new 
school, or at least the discoverer of a new mine of 
material, in which Frank Norris followed with some 
powerful work, too soon cut short by death, and 
where a number of living men like Owen Wister, 
Stewart Edward White, and O. Henry are finding 
graphic stories to tell. Hamlin Garland, Booth 
Tarkington, William Allen White, and Robert 
Herrick are vigorous romancers of the Middle West. 
Winston Churchill studies politics and people in 
various regions, while Robert Chambers explores 
the social complications of New York; and both 
write novels which are full of interest for Americans 
and count their readers by the hundred thousand. 

In the short-story Miss Jewett, Miss Wilkins, and 
Mrs. Deland have developed characteristic and 
charming forms of a difficult art. In poetry George 
E. Woodberry and William Vaughn Moody have 
continued the tradition of Emerson and Lowell in 
lofty and pregnant verse. Joaquin Miller has sung 
the songs of the Sierras, and Edwin Markham the 
chant of labour. James Whitcomb Riley has put 
the very heart of the Middle West into his familiar 
poems, humorous and pathetic. 

260 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

And Walt Whitman, the "democratic bard," the 
poet who broke all the poetic traditions? Is it too 
soon to determine whether his revolution in litera- 
ture was a success, whether he was a great initiator 
or only a great exception? Perhaps so. But it is 
not too soon to recognize the beauty of feeling and 
form, and the strong Americanism, of his poems on 
the death of Lincoln, and the power of some of his 
descriptive lines, whether they are verse or rhap- 
sodic prose. 

It is evident that such a list of names as I have 
been trying to give must necessarily be very imperfect. 
Many names of substantial value are omitted. 
The field is not completely covered. But at least 
it may serve to indicate some of the different schools 
and sources, and to give some idea of the large lit- 
erary activity in which various elements and aspects 
of the Spirit of America have found and are finding 
expression. 

III. The real value of literature is to be sought 
in its power to express and to impress. What relation 
does it bear to the interpretation of nature and life 
in a certain country at a certain time? That is the 
question in its historical form. How clearly, how 
beautifully, how perfectly, does it give that interpre- 
tation in concrete works of art? That is the ques- 
tion in its purely aesthetic form. What personal 

261 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

qualities, what traits of human temperament and 
disposition does it reveal most characteristically 
in the spirit of the land? That is the question in 
the form which belongs to the study of human nature. 

It is in this last form that I wish to put the ques- 
tion, just now, in order to follow logically the line 
marked by the general title of these lectures. The 
Spirit of America is to be understood not only by 
the five elements of character which I have tried to 
sketch in outline, — the instinct of self-reliance, the 
love of fair-play, the energetic will, the desire of order, 
the ambition of self-development. It has also cer- 
tain temperamental traits; less easy to define, per- 
haps; certainly less clearly shown in national and 
social institutions, but not less important to an inti- 
mate acquaintance with the people. 

These temperamental traits are the very things 
which are most distinctive in literature. They give 
it colour and flavour. They are the things which 
touch it with personality. In American literature, 
if you look at it broadly, I think you will find four 
of these traits most clearly revealed, — a strong reli- 
gious feeling, a sincere love of nature, a vivid sense 
of humour, and a deep sentiment of humanity. 

(i) It may seem strange to say that a country 
which does not even name the Supreme Being in its 
national constitution, which has no established form 
of worship or belief, and whose public schools and 

262 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

universities are expressly disconnected from any 
kind of church control, is at the same time strongly 
religious, in its temperament. Yet strange as this 
seems, it is true of America. 

The entire independence of Church and State was 
the result of a deliberate conviction, in which the 
interest of religion was probably the chief considera- 
tion. In the life of the people the Church has been 
not less, but more, potent than in most other countries. 
Professor Wendell was perfectly right in the lectures 
which he delivered in Paris four years ago, when he 
laid so much emphasis upon the influence of religion 
in determining the course of thought and the char- 
acter of literature in America. Professor Munster- 
berg is thoroughly correct when he says in his 
excellent book The Americans, "The entire Amer- 
ican people are in fact profoundly religious, and 
have been, from the day when the Pilgrim Fathers 
landed, down to the present moment." 

The proof of this is not to be seen merely in out- 
ward observance, though I suppose there is hardly 
any other country, except Scotland, in which there 
is so much church-going, Sabbath-keeping, and 
Bible-reading. It is estimated that less than fifteen 
of the eighty millions of total population are entirely 
out of touch with any church. But all this might 
be rather superficial, formal, conventional. It 
might be only a hypocritical cover for practical in- 

263 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

fidelity. And sometimes when one reads the "yellow 
journals" with their flaming exposures of social 
immorality, industrial dishonesty, and political cor- 
ruption, one is tempted to think that it may be so. 

Yet a broader, deeper, saner view, — a steady 
look into the real life of the typical American home, 
the normal American community, — reveals the fact 
that the black spots are on the surface and not in 
the heart of the country. 

The heart of the people at large is still old-fash- 
ioned in its adherence to the idea that every man is 
responsible to a higher moral and spiritual power, 
— that duty is more than pleasure, — that life cannot 
be translatec^in terms of the five senses, and that the 
attempt to do go lowers and degrades the man who 
makes it, — that religion alone can give an adequate 
interpretation of life, and that morality alone can 
make it worthy of respect and admiration. This 
is the characteristic American way of looking at the 
complicated and interesting business of living which 
we men and women have upon our hands. 

It is rather a sober and intense view. It is not 
always free from prejudice, from bigotry, from 
fanaticism, from superstition. It is open to inva- 
sion by strange and uncouth forms of religiosity. 
America has offered a fertile soil for the culture of 
new and queer religions. But on the whole, — yes, 
in immensely the larger proportion, — the old reli- 

264 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

gion prevails, and a rather simple and primitive 
type of Christianity keeps its hold upon the hearts 
and minds of the majority. The consequence of 
this is (to quote again from Professor Miinsterberg, 
lest you should think me a prejudiced reporter), 
that "however many sins there are, the life of the 
people is intrinsically pure, moral, and devout." 
"The number of those who live above the general 
level of moral requirement is astonishingly large." 

Now this habit of soul, this tone of life, is reflected 
in American literature. Whatever defects it may 
have, a lack of serious feeling and purpose is not 
among them. It is pervaded, generally, by the spirit- 
ual preconception. It approaches life from the 
point of view of responsibility. It gives full value 
to those instincts, desires, and hopes in man which 
have to do with the unseen world. 

Even in those writers who are moved by a sense 
of revolt against the darkness and severity of certain 
theological creeds, the attempt is not to escape from 
religion, but to find a clearer, nobler, and more lov- 
mg expression of religion. Even in those works 
which deal with subjects which are non-religious in 
their specific quality, — stories of adventure, like 
Cooper's novels; poems of romance, like the bal- 
lads of Longfellow and Whittier, — one feels the 
implication of a spiritual background, a moral law, 
a Divine providence, — 

365 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

"Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his 
own." 

This, hitherto, has been the characteristic note of 
the literature of America. It has taken for granted 

that there is a God, that men must answer to Him 

» 

for their actions, and that one of the most interesting 

things about people, even in books, is their moral 

quality. 

(2) Another trait which seems to me strongly 

marked in the American temperament and clearly 

reflected in American literature is the love of nature. 

The attractions of the big out-of-doors have taken 

«a*«« •. 4 ■ -^i'-v»feii^:iSB^ the people. They,feel a strong affection 

••/, ♦., ..'for 'fhefr'griEs^, free, umeud^Qf forests, their swift- 
";■■;• ■■-.»- ^^. '■ -'^' ■ ' '^ (-'.•' •.» ^ I? 
^v ,._"^.. rising; riveiis^- 'their {brighnl^lriendly brooks, their 

'■* "\ wooded licipijn'p^'janges of/ the East, their snowy 

. r peaks pi(|r Vast* plains and many-coloured canyons 

*. , "ot the Wesl^ ' \ --: 

• '.I supple there is no other country in the world 

where so itiany peo;^le break away from the fatigues 

^^ v^ of Civilization ^v^ry year, and go out to live in the 

'•^^ . oatn for a vScatioii with nature. The business of 

' .making tents and, C^p. outfits for these voluntary 

- ■ g5T)sies has grd'wn tc^ be 6aormous. In California 

■ r ■ they do not ^ven ask for a tent. They sleep d, la 

*i *\ ' belle iioih. ' . , 

w '<, R» ■ The ■ Audubon societies ^ave spread to every 

State. You will not f!i$d anywhere in Europe, ex- 

i . 2. ' . • , 266 , 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

cept perhaps in Switzerland, such companies of boys 
and girls studying the wild flowers and the birds. 
The interest is not altogether, nor mainly, scientific. 
It is vital and temperamental. It is the expression 
of an inborn sympathy with nature and a real delight 
in her works. 

This has found an utterance in the large and 
growing "nature-literature" of America. John 
James Audubon, Henry Thoreau, John Burroughs, 
Clarence King, John Muir, Ernest Seton, Frank 
Chapman, Ernest IngersoU, — these are some of 
the men who have not only carefully described, but 
also lovingly interpreted, "nature in hepi visible 
forms," and so have given to their books, beyond the 
value of accurate records of observation, the chaMp 
of sympathetic and illuniinative writing. * '* 

But it is not only in these special books that I 
would look for evidence of the love of nature in the 
American temperament. It is found all through the - 
poetry and the .prose of the best writers^^ The mos^ 
perfect bit of writing in the works of that stern Cal- 
vinist, Jonathan Edwards, is the description' of an. 
.early morning walk through a field of wild flowers. 
Some of the best pages of Irving and Cooper are ~ 
sketches of landscape along the Hudson River. 
The scenery of New England is^ drawn with ij^finite 
delicacy and skill in the poetry of Bryant, Whittier, 
and Emerson. Bret Harte and Joaquin Miller make 
267 



r 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

us see the painted desert and the ragged Sierras. 
James Lane Allen shows us the hemp fields of 
Kentucky, George Cable the bayous of Louisiana. 
But the list of illustrations is endless. The whole 
literature of America is filled with pictures of nature. 
There is hardly a familiar bird or flower for which 
some poet has not tried to find a distinct, personal, 
significant expression in his verse. 

(3) A third trait of the American temperament 
is the sense of humour. This is famous, not to say 
notorious. The Americans are supposed to be a 
nation of jokers, whose daily jests, like their ready- 
made shoes, have a peculiar oblique form which 
makes it slightly difficult for people of other nation- 
alities to get into them. 

There may be some truth in the latter part of this 
supposition, for I have frequently observed that a 
remark which seemed to me very amusing only puz- 
zled a foreigner. For example, a few years ago, when 
Mark Twain was in Europe, a despatch appeared in 
some of the American newspapers giving an account 
of his sudden death. Knowing that this would 
trouble his friends, and being quite well, he sent a 
cablegram in these words, "Report of my death 
grossly exaggerated, Mark Twain." When I re- 
peated this to an Englishman, he looked at me pity- 
ingly and said : " But how could you exaggerate a 
thing like that, my dear fellow? Either he was 

268 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

dead, or he was alive, don't you know." This 
was perfectly incontestable, and the statement of it 
represented the English point of view. 

But to the American incontestable things often 
have a double aspect: first that of the solemn fact; 
and then that of the curious, unreal, pretentious 
shape in which it is dressed by fashion, or vanity, 
or stupid respectability. In this region of incongrui- 
ties created by the contrast between things as they 
really are and the way in which dull or self-important 
people usually talk about them, American humour 
plays. 

It is not irreverent toward the realities. But for 
the conventionahties, the absurdities, the pomposi- 
ties of life, it has a habit of friendly satire and good- 
tempered raillery. It is not like the French wit, 
brilliant and pointed. It is not like the English fun, 
in which practical joking plays so large a part. It 
is not like the German joke, which announces its 
arrival with the sound of a trumpet. It usually wears 
rather a sober face and speaks with a quiet voice. 
It delights in exposing pretensions by gravely carry- 
ing them to the point of wild extravagance. It finds 
its material in subjects which are laughable, but not 
odious; and in people who are ridiculous, but not 
hateful. 

Its favourite method is to exaggerate the foibles 
of persons who are excessive in certain directions, or 

269 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

to make a statement absurd simply by taking it 
literally. Thus a Yankee humorist said of a certain 
old lady that she was so inquisitive that she put her 
head out of all the front windows of the house at the 
same time. A Westerner claimed the prize of inven- 
tiveness for his town on the ground that one of its 
citizens had taught his ducks to swim on hot water 
in order that they might lay boiled eggs. Mr. Dooley 
described the book in which President Roosevelt gave 
his personal reminiscences of the Spanish-American 
War under the title " Alone in Cuhea.'*^ 

Once, when I was hunting in the Bad Lands of 
North Dakota, and had lost my way, I met a soli- 
tary horseman in the desert and said to him, "I 
want to go to the Cannonball River." "Well, 
stranger," he answered, looking at me with a solemn 
air of friendly interest, " I guess ye can go if ye want 
to; there ain't no string on ye." But when I laughed 
and said what I really wanted was that he should 
show me the way, he replied, "Why didn't ye say 
so?" and rode with me until we struck the trail to 
camp. 

All this is typical of native American humour, 
quaint, good-natured, sober-faced, and extrava- 
gant. At bottom it is based upon the democratic 
assumption that the artificial distinctions and con- 
ventional phrases of life are in themselves amusing. 
It flavours the talk of the street and the dinner-table. 

270 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

It makes the Americans inclined to prefer farce to 
melodrama, comedietta to grand opera. In its 
extreme and degenerate form it drifts into habitual 
buffoonery, like the crude, continuous jests of the 
comic supplements to the Sunday newspapers. In 
its better shape it relieves the strenuousness and the 
monotony of life by a free and kindly touch upon its 
incongruities, just as a traveller on a serious errand 
makes the time pass by laughing at his own mishaps 
and at the queer people whom he meets by the way. 
You will find it in literature in all forms: in 
books of the professional humorists from Artemus 
Ward to Mr. Dooley: in books of genre paint- 
ing, like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and 
Pudd^nhead Wilson, or like David Harum, 
which owed its immense popularity to the lifelike 
portrait of an old horse trader in a rural town of 
central New York : in books of sober purpose, like 
the essays of Lowell or Emerson, where a sudden 
smile flashes out at you from the gravest page. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes shows it to you, in The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, dressed in the 
proper garb of Boston; you may recognize it on 
horseback among the cowboys, in the stories of 
Owen Wister and O. Henry; it talks the Mis- 
sissippi River dialect in the admirable pages of 
Charles D. Stewart's Partners with Providence, and 
speaks with the local accent of Louisville, Ken- 

271 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

tucky, in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. Almost 
everywhere you will find the same general tone, 
a compound of mock gravity, exaggeration, good 
nature, and inward laughter. 

You may catch the spirit of it all in a letter that 
Benjamin Franklin sent to a London newspaper in 
1765. He was having a little fun with English edi- 
tors who had been printing wild articles about 
America. "All this," wrote he, "is as certainly true 
as the account, said to be from Quebec, in all the 
papers of last week, that the inhabitants of Canada 
are making preparations for a cod and whale fishery 
this summer in the upper Lakes. Ignorant people 
may object that the upper Lakes are fresh, and that 
cod and whales are salt-water fish ; but let them know. 
Sir, that cod, like other fish, when attacked by their 
enemies, fly into any water where they can be safest; 
that whales, when they have a mind to eat cod, pur- 
sue them wherever they fly ; and that the grand leap 
of the whale in the chase up the Falls of Niagara is 
esteemed, by those who have seen it, as one of the 
finest spectacles in Nature." 
//. (4) The last trait of the American temperament 

^ on which I wish touch briefly is the sentiment of 

humanity. 

It is not an unkind country, this big republic, 
where the manners are so "free and easy," the 
tempo of life so quick, the pressure of business so 

272 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

heavy and continuous. The feeling of philanthropy 
in its broader sense, — the impulse which makes men 
inclined to help one another, to sympathize with the 
unfortunate, to lift a neighbour or a stranger out of 
a tight place, — good will, in short, — is in the blood 
of the people. 

When their blood is heated, they are hard hitters, 
fierce fighters. But give them time to cool down, 
and they are generous peacemakers. Abraham 
Lincoln's phrase, "With malice toward none, with 
charity for all," strikes the key-note. In the "mild 
concerns of ordinary life" they like to cultivate 
friendly relations, to show neighbourliness, to do 
the useful thing. 

There is a curious word of approbation in the 
rural dialect of Pennsylvania. When the country 
folk wish to express their liking, for a man, they say, 
"He is a very common person," — meaning not that 
he is low or vulgar, but approachable, sympathetic, 
kind to all. 

Underneath the surface of American life, often 
rough and careless, there lies this widespread feeling : 
that human nature everywhere is made of the same 
stuff; that life's joys and sorrows are felt in the same 
way whether they are hidden under homespun and 
calico or under silk and broadcloth; that it is every 
man's duty to do good and not evil to those who live 
in the world with him, 

T 273 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

In literature this feeling has shown itself in many 
ways. It has given a general tone of sympathy with 
"the under dog in a fight." It has led writers to 
look for subjects among the plain people. It has 
made the novel of American "high life" incline 
generally to satire or direct rebuke. In the typical 
American romance the hero is seldom rich, the villain 
seldom poor. 

In the weaker writers the humane sentiment 
dwindles into sentimentality. In the stronger writers 
it gives, sometimes, a very noble and manly note. 
In general you may say that it has impressed upon 
American literature the mark of a moral purpose, 
— the wish to elevate, to purify, to fortify the mind, 
and so the life, of those who read. 

Is this a merit or a fault in literature? Judge 
for yourselves. 

No doubt a supremely ethical intention is an in- 
sufficient outfit for an author. His work may be 

" Chaste as the icicle 
That's curded by the frost from purest snow 
And hangs on Dian's temple," 

and yet it may be without savour or permanence. 
Often the desire to teach a good lesson bends a book 
from the straight line of truth-to-the-facts, and makes 
a so-called virtuous ending at the price of sincerity 
and thoroughgoing honesty. 
It is not profitable to real virtue to dwell in a world 
274 



SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 

of fiction where miracles are worked to crown the 
good and proper folk with unvarying felicity and 
to send all the rascals to prison or a miserable grave. 
Nor is it a wise and useful thing for literature to 
ignore the lower side of life for the sake of com- 
mending the higher; to speak a false and timid 
language for fear of shocking the sensitive; to evade 
the actual problems and conflicts which men and 
women of flesh and blood have to meet, for the sake 
of creating a perfectly respectable atmosphere for 
the imagination to live in. 

O 

This mistaking of prudery for decency, this un- 
willingness to deal quite frankly with life as it is, 
has perhaps acted with a narrowing and weakening 
effect upon the course of American literature in the 
past. But just now there seems to be a reaction 
toward the other extreme. Among certain English 
and American writers, especially of the female sex, 
there is a new fashion of indiscriminate candour 
which would make Balzac blush. But I suppose 
that this will pass, since every extreme carries within 
itself the seed of disintegration. 

The morale of literature, after all, does not lie 
outside of the great circle of ethics. It is a simple 
application of the laws which embrace the whole of 
human life to the specific business of a writer. 

To speak the truth; to respect himself and his 
readers; to do justly and to love mercy; to deal 
275 



THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 

with language as a living thing of secret and incal- 
culable power; not to call good, evil, or evil, good; 
to honour the noble and to condemn the base; to 
face the facts of life with courage, the humours of 
life with sympathy, and the mysteries of life with 
reverence; and to perform his task of writing as 
carefully, as lovingly, as well as he can, — this, it 
seems to me, is the whole duty of an author. 

This, if I mistake not, has been the effort of the 
chief writers of America. They have spoken surely 
to the heart of a great people. They have kept the 
fine ideals of the past alive in the conflicts of the 
present. They have lightened the labours of a 
weary day. They have left their readers a little hap- 
pier, perhaps a little wiser, certainly a little stronger 
and braver, for the battle and the work of life. 

The measure of their contribution to the small 
group of world-books, the literature that is universal 
in meaning and enduring in form, must be left for 
the future to determine. But it is sure already that 
American literature has done much to express and 
to perpetuate the Spirit of America. 



276 



By ARCHIBALD GARY COOLIDGE, Ph.D. 

Professor of History in Harvard University 

The United States as a World Power 

Cloth, i2mo, %2,oo net 

This book is based on the lectures delivered by the author at the Sor- 
bonne in Paris in the winter of 1906-1907. Among the questions con- 
sidered as affecting the relations of the United States with other countries 
are immigration and race questions, the Monroe Doctrine and our rela- 
tions with Latin America, the Spanish War and the acquisition of 
colonies, our relations with the chief continental powers, with England 
and with Canada, the Isthmian Canal, the United States in the Pacific 
and our relations with China and with Japan. 

" We know of no volume which sums up so well and in so brief a space 
the wide interests which have attracted public attention during the last 
decade and which, incidentally, are certain in view of our development 
to loom still larger on the national horizon. Many Americans will 
doubtless welcome the opportunity of not only reducing to order and 
simplicity in their minds the vast mass of information relating to the 
movements and interests of the United States as a world power, which 
they have acquired from desultory reading, but also of refreshing their 
memory as to the historical development of which these movements 
form, for the present, the climax." — The Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

" The book is justly entitled to recognition as a work of real distinction. 
It has substance as well as symmetry and force ; it is void of dogmatism 
or special pleading, but it moves the reader to thought ; it handles 
serious and complicated questions with a light touch, but the impression 
of its solid qualities is the impression that remains." — New York Post. 

" A comprehensive and impartial statement of the nature and extent of 
our national responsibilities. . . . The book is not a dry political 
treatise as the title might suggest, but is as absorbingly interesting as the 
best histories. On account of this, as well as of its unblinking compre- 
hensiveness, it deservedly ranks as a great book." — Philadelphia Tele- 
graph. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



BOOKS ON AMERICAN HISTORY AND POLITICS 



The American Commonwealth 

By JAMES BRYCE Crown 8vo, cloth, $775 net 

This edition in one volume revised for the use of colleges and high 
schools. 

" We have here a storehouse of political information regarding 
America such as no other writer, American or other, has ever pro- 
vided in one work. ... It will remain a standard." — New York 
Times. 

The United States : An Outline of Political History 

By GOLDWIN SMITH Cloth, i2mo, %2.oo net 

"A literary masterpiece, as readable as a novel, remarkable for its 
compression without dryness, and its brilliancy without rhetorical 
effort." — The Nation. 

Foundations of American Foreign Policy 

By ALBERT B. HART Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net 

" Exceptionally instructive and illuminating." — New York Tribune. 

The Industrial History of the United States 

By KATHERINE COMAN Cloth, i2mo, $1.25 net 

" A most excellent guidebook for a region of history that has been 
as yet but little studied. Its points of excellence are many." — 
Dun's Review. 

A Century of Expansion 

By WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON Cloth, i2mo, $7.50 net 
" A refreshing, vigorous presentation of the facts, consequences, and 
responsibilities of national expansion." — Pittsburg Chronicle Tele- 
graph. 

Readings in American Government and Politics 

By CHARLES A. BEARD Cloth, i2mo, %i.qo net 

A collection of interesting material illustrative of the different periods 
in the history of the United States, prepared for those students who 
desire to study source writings. 

Memories of a Hundred Years 

By EDWARD EVERETT HALE Cloth, 8vo, %2.so net 

" History built up from personalities and broadened in conclusions 
and estimates. It is biography of the best kind." — The Outlook. 

The Principles of Politics 

By JEREMIAH W. JENKS Cloth, l6mo, $.40 net 

" The book should be of interest to both student and general 
reader." — Boston Transcript. 



World Politics 

By PAUL S. REINSCH Half leather, I2mo, $1.25 net 

This volume discusses world politics at the end of the nineteenth 
century as influenced by the Oriental situation, and points out the 
relation of the various European powers and of the United States 
to this situation. 

Colonial Government 

By PAUL S. REINSCH Half leather, l2mo, % 1.25 net 

"We know of no volume of the same size that conveys so much 
information as this, in so clear and orderly a manner." — New York 
Times. 

Colonial Administration 

By PAUL S. REINSCH Half leather, I2mo, $1.25 net 

" This is the most comprehensive and thorough study of Colonial 
methods yet produced on our side of the Atlantic." — Chicago 
Record-Herald. 

A History of American Political Theories 

By CHARLES EDWARD MERRIAM Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net 

This book presents a description and analysis of the characteristic 
types of political theory that have from time to time been dominant 
in American politics. 

The Lower South in American History 

By WILLIAM GARROTT BROWN Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net 

"The author of this volume has judgment, insight, imagination, 
scholarship, and a great subject." — TAe Outlook. 

Documentary Source Book of American History 

By WILLIAM MACDONALD Cloth, i2mo, % 1.75 net 

" The book is filled with vitally important documents dealing with 
American history." — Scientific American. 

The Spirit of American Government 

By J. ALLEN SMITH Half leather, l2mo, $1.25 net 

" The book is a noteworthy study of our Constitution and deserves 
the attention of all interested in good government, good politics, 
good citizens." — Education. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



HERBERT CROLY'S 

The Promise of American Life 

Cloth, i2mo, %2.oo net 

President J. G. Schurman of Cornell University writes of this 
book : " I regard Mr. Croly's book as a serious and weighty contribu- 
tion to contemporary American politics. A treatise on the fundamental 
political ideas of the American people which attempts to develop their 
full content and to re-read American history in the light of these devel- 
oped ideas cannot, of course, be made light literature ; but the author 
brings to the weighty subject with which he deals a lucid and vivacious 
style and a logical sense of arrangement. And thoughtful readers who 
are interested in fundamental political principles, once they have started 
the book, are pretty certain to finish it. . . . For my own part I have 
found the book exceedingly stimulating. It is also instructive, for the 
author seems to be thoroughly versed in the modern political and eco- 
nomic history not only of America but of Europe as well. Finally, the 
volume has the immense attraction of dealing with a subject which of 
all political subjects is now most prominent in the mind not only of 
thoughtful citizens, but, one might almost say, of the American people." 

" ' The Promise of American Life ' will beyond doubt be recognized by 
students of the great philosophical currents of American history and 
political developtnent as an unusual and remarkable work. . . . Mr. 
Croly acutely analyzes American democracy and pseudo-democracy, 
while his treatment of the actual present tendencies of democratic ideals 
is even more instructive and suggestive than the purely historical part 
of his book. He writes with a free pen and is both apt and keen-witted 
in his way of illustrating theories and beliefs by practical applications. 
One chapter, for instance, which will attract very special attention is that 
which considers the aims and methods of four typical reformers, Jerome, 
Hearst, Bryan, and Roosevelt." — The Outlook. 



PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



310 8 3 



THE SPIRIT 
OFAMERICA 




t>Mtrv^ 























•C5 V 




•^^0^ 



0^ .-^^-^o. .^^'.^^i.-^. .o^.c:,;^.'^^^ A 











'>^^A^ oV^^:^lt%"'^ ^^MrS^ ^''^^M^^\ V^l*^ 


















.r \ '1 







^ ^ ^ V^ 










o . i. " a'V 




a"^ .'J4:% ^^ ic 
































vO' 




4 Q>. 5 



f^^^ V 



5^ ,.-o, '^<- "" 'V- '•• 






cS^^ "WWW* >^^'^ 














, •i*' , O N O ^ <<» 



